


The Last Sea

by blanketed_in_stars



Series: Rash Actions [2]
Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: (except for the 4th and 5th movies because they Didn't Happen), Canon Compliant, F/M, Flying Dutchman, Ghosts, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2019-12-27 02:54:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 52,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18295406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanketed_in_stars/pseuds/blanketed_in_stars
Summary: James Norrington has a number of questions: Why are souls returning from beyond the grave? Why is he one of them? And why does Will Turner seem to hate the sight of him?Actually, he can hazard a guess at that last one.





	1. Gone North About

**Author's Note:**

> Well, folks! We're back!!
> 
> After a bit more than two years' waffling, I can't actually blame this on [Audrey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Palebluedot) again because it's well and truly my fault this time. However, I still know nothing about the Navy, and just as little about ships. It's all bullshit, friends. And it should pick up a bit after the introductory chapter. Enjoy!
> 
> Updates monthly (hopefully), with tags/content warnings added as they become relevant.
> 
> The title is from "[D'Avalos' Prayer](https://www.bartleby.com/library/poem/3485.html)" by John Masefield (you can listen to a lovely setting of the poem [here](https://soundcloud.com/adelemcallister/davalos-prayer)).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gone north about: dead, by any cause except drowning.

_And maybe that's all a ghost is, in the end. Regret, grown legs, gone walking._

  
—Nicole Kornher-Stace, _Archivist Wasp_  


———

It comes to him in waves: sensations, almost too faint to feel, but growing stronger. Lungs that are stopped with a salt tide, skin crusted in brine, something in his chest squeezed tight and painful—wringing, tugging, and then he breaches the surface.

By the time they’ve hauled him to the deck, he can kneel on the legs that he has and hear with his ears. And what he hears is a muttering growl, one that matches, once he wipes the water from his eyes and blinks them open, the ring of wondering faces around him cast in a dim light. “Fetch the captain,” someone says, but there are too many to see who leaves to do so.

Hair like seaweed hangs across his vision, and the smell of salt is overpowering. Around him, inside him, of him. Still that pressure on his chest, pulling, and he feels like a fish on a line—the image flashes through his mind before he knows how it came to him, the silver fins sparking in sunlight, mouth wide and gaping.

“Another one?” a voice says, and the pressure increases—holds—holds. Footsteps approach. “Look around, man, the whole sea’s covered in them, I don’t see—”

“Sir,” another says, followed by more shuffling of boots, and then silence.

He struggles to his feet, leaning heavily on the gunwale, unsteady and dizzy with the brackish water still lingering in his lungs. He raises a hand to brush his hair from his eyes and pauses as he lowers it again, staring not at the hand but through it, the form translucent and glowing white-blue.

The man he can see through his hand is staring, too, and his mouth moves. “James.”

He hadn’t been able to place himself till now—the last of the world returning to him—but as if a lock has been turned in his mind, James remembers. His name, the feel of a hilt in the palm of his hand and the weight of the blade along his arm, moonlight and fire flickering on water. A brand of pain slicing through him, the fear and the cries from behind him and the way it had all faded…

“James,” the man says again, and it comes to him that he has stumbled nearly to his knees again. One hand braced against the deck, the other curled to a fist at his belt, which is empty.

Blinking the memory back, James looks up and is confronted with another surge of familiarity—this face he knows, will always know, even in death or wherever he is now. “Will,” he says, and thinks mundanely that he ought not to be so familiar, but it doesn’t matter, because the word is scarcely more than a choking cough. “Mr. Turner,” he manages when he can breathe again, and forces himself back to his feet.

Will flinches, a momentary widening of his eyes too small for anyone else to catch. He is still gazing at James with a stunned expression—but not entirely, James thinks, as he remembers. There is something different about his face. Before he can give it further thought, Will barks out, “To your stations.”

With some more muttering and many backward glances, the crew disperse. James watches them go, not really seeing them; his thoughts are a-jumble so that he hardly trusts his own senses. But the rigging, the swivel guns, the forecastle glimpsed through the ropes—he seizes on the sight and holds fast to the steady recognition. “This is the _Dutchman,”_ he says.

Will nods once. His eyes are hard, watchful—guarded, so that James can see nothing in them.

“Where’s Jones?” James asks. “Is he—?” The question dies on his lips, strangled by another, more pressing concern, but he isn’t sure how to address it. “Am I—what— _how_ am I here?”

At last, Will looks away, his mouth set in unfamiliar lines. “You’d best come with me,” he says. “We need to talk.”

So James follows him, fascinated and disturbed at once by the sight of his shadowy limbs as he walks. The ghostly light is what distresses him the most, coming from every inch of his body; it doesn’t help that he can still see the deck through his feet. As such, he hardly looks up until they have left the deck. Then he raises his eyes to find himself in a cabin he knows well, though the effects and decoration have changed somewhat: the pipe organ still looms in the depths of the room, and seeing it adds to his chill.

While James stares, Will has closed the door behind them both and now stands leaning with one hand on a table that stands in the center of the room. The other hand is pinching the bridge of his nose. The lantern hanging from the ceiling, already lit, sends soft shadows flickering over the cabin. “What do you remember?” he asks in the quiet.

“I was—dead,” James says; yes, that’s the truth of it, and yet he stumbles over the words because they don’t seem to be true anymore. “Jones killed me.” He jerks his head toward the stern deck.

Will nods. “And then?”

“And then I was floating in the water, and your crew threw me a rope.” He looks at his hands again, which glimmer dimly back at him. “What’s going on?”

With a sigh, Will takes a seat at the table and gestures for James to do the same. “You _are_ dead,” he informs James, matter-of-fact, even coldly. “But for some time now, souls have been… re-emerging, one might say, from wherever it is that souls go. They come back as mist, mostly, hovering just over the water. I suspect you’re one of them.” His gaze flits over James, his eyes reflecting the blue glow. “Though why you’re like this, I can’t say.”

“When you say ‘for some time,’” James begins, “how long do you mean? How long has it been?” _Since I died,_ he doesn’t say, reluctant to give it voice. He doesn’t understand. Life, dying, all of it feels dream-like: a thousand years ago, or only a moment or two.

Will pauses a moment before he speaks. “Eighty years,” he says at length. It strikes James, with a muffled sort of shock, that he must have paused to count. “Give or take a few.”

“Eighty,” James repeats. “But you look—young.” Again, he falters, because it isn’t quite true. Not when James truly looks at him. Yet there are no wrinkles on Will’s skin, no clouds over his eyes. He looks strong, hale, as far from a hundred years old as the sun is from a storm.

Without humor, Will smiles. He tilts his head as if to concede a point.

And in a burst of intuition, James understands—Jones’s absence, the captain’s quarters, the long life and the bitterness. Horror steals in. “Will, you didn’t.” But he already knows the protest is in vain.

The smile flickers and is gone. “I didn’t choose it,” Will tells him, “but I am the captain now.” There is no pride in his voice. “For about eighty years, in fact.”

James struggles to comprehend what he’s hearing and gives up, sets it aside to be dealt with at another time. “And the souls have been coming back for eighty years as well?”

Will shakes his head. “That has been only a few months,” he says. “Long enough to know that this is no normal mist. And long enough to know that you shouldn’t be here.”

“I don’t know if I _am_ here,” James admits. He gestures to his own body. “I feel—not alive, but close to it, but this—what is this?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Will says. “Better, most likely.” He doesn’t elaborate, but rises from his seat and goes to one of the small windows above the organ, peering out. “It’s past sundown,” he says, turning back. “I don’t suppose you’re tired?”

Startled by the abrupt change of subject, James can only shake his head. He isn’t tired at all. Mostly, he is bewildered.

“I thought as much.” Will looks about the cabin as if hoping for a solution to materialize. “I’ve nowhere for you to sleep even if you were,” he says when none does. “Do you still love the sea as much as you once did?”

Now it is pain, not shock, that mutes him. James nods again.

“Good,” Will says, heedless, “because you’ll have the run of the deck, for tonight at least. I’m in the habit of locking this cabin. If you grow weary, you’ll have to take it up with Lawrence when he starts the graveyard watch.” And the unspoken conclusion: that neither of them is sure whether James _can_ grow weary, or indeed what manner of thing he is at all.

James recovers his voice at last. “Do you not trust your crew?”

“This is the _Dutchman,”_ Will reminds him. “Would you?” He leaves James no time to answer, but walks past him towards the door, saying as he goes, “I must tell the crew something so that no one takes fright and tries to shoot you when you come at them out of the dark. I doubt that one can die twice, but all the same.” The door clicks firmly shut behind him.

Left suddenly and unexpectedly alone, James grips the table in front of him, glad that he is sitting down. Curiously, what he feels most strongly is not shock or grief, but guilt, thick enough to choke him. Harsh as seawater in his throat, all the more sour for the name that lies unspoken and sharp between them. _Eighty years,_ he thinks, and the thought brings him the barest measure of comfort. Surely all wounds heal with time.

But even that is not enough to truly ease his shame, so James sets it aside as well. He rises and goes to the back of the cabin, where he finds he can see nothing from the window: night has well and truly fallen. The organ below the window is dusty, enormous, some of the embellishment tarnished with disuse. So Will does not play it. Instead of music, a closed book sits atop the instrument. Leaning forward, James reads the title, _The Sorrows of Young Werther._ The book, too, is dusty.

In fact, much of the room looks as if it has been neglected. The bed looks to be in use, yes, but the captain’s log is yellowed on its shelf and a half-empty bottle of rum sits beside it with no fingerprints in its dusty coating. Nowhere, aside from the unfamiliar book, does James see signs of the Will he knows—knew. He pushes his memory back to the small room above the smithy and recalls messy sketches on spare parchment, mending draped over the bedpost. In every corner a vibrant sense of life. Now, though, James struggles to discern anything at all.

Will enters without warning, and if he is surprised or suspicious to see James inspecting his possessions, he says nothing of it. “No one seems too upset,” he informs James. “They know they’re expected to keep working, at least, no matter how many ghosts we have on board. And that they’re not to fire on you.”

The word falls so naturally from Will’s lips, _ghosts,_ as if it means nothing—and James supposes it might not anymore. He shudders to think how long one must have to spend with the dead before they lose their power to horrify. And it’s strange, is it not, that James himself feels that horror instead? “Do you think a bullet would even touch me,” he asks, “let alone hurt me?”

“Well, you seem solid enough,” he says, nodding at James. “You left a good deal of water on the deck, at any rate, and you aren’t falling through chairs when you sit down, so you’re more than mist. Better not to risk it, don’t you think?”

James isn’t sure what he thinks. He doesn’t know how to square Will’s calm, self-assured command with the curt way he addresses James, and even less in light of his concern for James’s safety. To give a voice to his questions, though, seems akin to willingly walking the plank. So he merely inclines his head and says, “I’m grateful for your concern.”

Will seems hardly to hear him. “Is there anything you require?” he asks. “For the night?”

“Nothing,” James replies. He can see that it’s a dismissal, and takes his leave. As he said he would, Will locks the cabin door behind him: James hears the bolt slide shut.

The deck is near-deserted, though it’s not long after sunset. James isn’t sure whether he’d prefer to encounter one of the crew sooner, and so head off any difficulties that might arise, or to delay that moment for as long as possible. He chooses the latter for the moment and slinks along the side of the deck, keeping to the deepest shadows. The problem is that he is left, then, with nothing but his thoughts, and they are far from comforting.

But he takes solace in the fact that—whatever else it entails—he is on a ship, the deck rocking gently beneath his feet, the horizon stretching wide in all directions. Though he can’t quite see it at this hour. The salt wind brushes his face with a gentle touch and James inhales. Incredibly, he is alive. Or something close to it. It’s more than he could ever deserve, he thinks bitterly, given—well, given everything. He doesn’t blame Will for being sharp. Even if none of the rest had happened, there is still—

Footsteps pull James out of his thoughts, a quick light tread, coming closer. He presses back against the stairs that rise to the poop deck, finding himself still reluctant to make himself known now that he’s been given the opportunity. It seems the shadows must mask that faint bluish glow, or else the man who rounds the corner of the deck is distracted—in any event, he pays James no mind, simply strides past.

This can’t be Lawrence; there’s time left till the graveyard watch begins. So this is just another member of the crew, on patrol till midnight. Another pirate. One of Will’s men. God, how strange those thoughts are in his mind, two statements that ought never to coexist.

The crewman comes to a halt near the limit of what James can see from his hiding place. He begins whistling, low and soft, a short four-note tune that could almost be mistaken for a songbird if they were close to land. Leaning on the gunwale as he is, the crewman is only visible as a dark outline against the stars. After what James reckons is no more than five minutes, someone else speaks—so soft he cannot make out the words—and the man continues on his way, out of sight.

James heads in the other direction. He wonders absently if there is anyone in the crow’s nest tonight, but without any intention of climbing. It would be sure to attract notice, and besides he doesn’t particularly care to test just how solid he is, or how long he will stay that way. But, he thinks wistfully, it would be nice to be off of the deck. Up closer to the sky, with only the ocean beneath him.

Thoughts of that sort are sweeter, and James loses himself in them for a while—long enough that the guard changes, if the sound of low voices and footsteps on creaking wood are anything to go by. The moon is the barest sliver, the sky sprinkled with stars. That, too, is comfortingly familiar. James knows well this time of night—the graveyard watch, the sound of the sea knocking against the hull, the wind brushing the rigging. At one point, nights like this were all he ever wanted in the world.

“Oi!” The hiss makes James start and turn, but there’s no one there—or anywhere. “Get out of here. Go on, get.”

The voice is coming from the other side of the quarter deck. James is loathe to go closer, but the crewman he saw earlier is somewhere on the main deck, and he wants even less to encounter the watch. Hesitantly, he takes a step away, only to freeze as a shape comes into view—and then the cat scampers past and out of sight again. James breathes a sigh of relief.

And then someone else comes walking along, so unexpected and so quiet that James scarcely has time to tuck himself behind the stairs to the aftercastle. He can no longer see the one on patrol, Lawrence, and so James watches the new man, who moves almost as lightly as the cat, in truth—apparently ousted from the balcony and looking displeased about it. Then, horribly, he stops on the second step and sits down, elbows on his knees.

And now James is trapped: the man shows no signs of moving. While Lawrence has not made an appearance, either, James would rather not wait around until he does, and yet he can hardly escape notice where he is. Then, as if the thought itself were audible, the man speaks without turning around. “You’ve got the captain in a right state, whoever you are.”

For the third time in as many minutes, James starts in surprise. He still doesn’t move, feeling half-frozen where he stands, but he finds his voice: “How did you know I was here?” He’s hidden from where the man is sitting, he’s sure of it.

In answer, the man points—ahead of himself and at the cat, which is standing several yards away and staring directly at James, its back arched and tail straight down. “Fascine likes the crew, all of us. Doesn’t seem to care much for ghosts, though.”

James stares back at the cat, transfixed by the narrowed eyes. He puts out a hand, intending somehow to show that he means it no harm, but at his movement it hisses and darts off again.

“Can’t say I blame her,” the man comments dryly. He half-turns and James catches a glimpse of a sharp chin in the low, mist-swathed light.

“You said,” James says, pitching his voice low to match the man’s quiet, “that the captain was—upset?”

The man turns away again. “Seemed so, when he came to tell us not to take fright and shoot you. Doubt it would do much good, myself, but I wouldn’t want to cross Turner when he gets that look—”

“What look?” James asks when the man falls silent. There’s no response; the man stands up, still silent, and steps down off the staircase. “Tell me, man, what look did he—” And then James, too, is struck dumb, staring towards the prow as well.

It’s the mist, creeping over the forecastle. The same sort that surrounds the ship and drifts over the water—except it doesn’t look the same now. No longer simply the same blue-black hue as the night, but dark as the depths, darker than the space between the stars. The sight of it sends a chill down James’s spine.

The man hesitates a moment more, then makes for the hatch to go belowdeck. He glances back towards James as he’s hauling it open and pauses. “Suppose it can’t hurt you, can it? Being dead and all,” he says, and before James can respond or even take a step towards the hatch, the man has stepped down and closed it.

And then James is left alone, with the mist coming ever-closer as the ship continues forward. “Hell,” James says to no one. He doesn’t know what exactly is dangerous about this mist, but he doesn’t like the look of it at all, and doesn’t blame the crewman for taking cover—he dithers on the spot for a moment, torn between forcing his way down belowdeck as well, where the rest of the crew is ostensibly gathered, or finding shelter somewhere above. And then his own hesitation makes the choice for him, as the black mist engulfs him like a wave.

It feels—warm. That alone takes James by surprise, because he’s scarcely felt the wind or the faint spray at all since being hauled aboard. But now, with the inky haze pressing in on all sides, he feels warm, and frightened, and _alive._ He reaches out into the mist and sees his own hand, no longer translucent or glowing blue: just his hand, as it was in life. His other hand looks to be the same; in fact, surrounded by the dark, James can see that his whole body is as it once was—corporeal, opaque, and mortal as far as he can tell.

It’s then, just as he begins to believe it, that the terror rises up in him. A chill down his spine and sweat on his skin, and his heart racing, squeezing so tight it’s painful—and James reaches out into the darkness, but there’s nothing to hold, no proof of the world beyond the deck still solid beneath his feet. He tries to cry out, if only to hear his own echo, but the sound dies in his throat—he falls to his knees—and he feels again the piercing pain between his ribs, the ebbing of warmth once again from his limbs. _Do you fear death?_ James gasps, chokes.

Then, just as abruptly, the tightness in his chest subsides, and James stills, trembling in shock. He realizes he has closed his eyes, and opens them on night—but only the night, quiet as it was before. He can see the deck and the sails and hear the sea, he can see the waves when he hauls himself upright using the gunwale. Turning his head, he sees the strange black mist drifting back towards the stern and falling behind the ship, receding from view.

In the sudden calm, James catches his breath and rubs his face with clumsy fingers, which he realizes have turned pearly-blue once more. His mind is filled at once with a thousand questions, an incapacitating bewilderment, and a dizzying relief. He can hardly make sense of what happened—the pain, the silence, the fear. James breathes out and looks about more carefully. The mist around the ship is gray and shifting, normal; the deck is deserted. Thank God. He tilts his head back. In his ears, the sound of the sea washing whisper-soft against the hull. Above, the constant haze has thinned—for a moment, the stars shine through, high and far-away and cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr](http://blanketed-in-stars.tumblr.com)! Comments are love <3


	2. Rogue Wave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rogue wave: an unusually large wave for a given sea state.

When the morning comes, the faint beginnings of sunlight turn all the world to gray and James, lingering on the now-deserted balcony watching the water speed beneath him, is relieved. He is no stranger to long watches, but the tension of avoiding the crew and the horror of the strange black mist make him eager to leave the night behind him. True, he hasn’t encountered any more of the crew since just before the mist, to his satisfaction. But as he makes his wary way around to the main deck once again, James wonders how long that will last—already a man has stumbled up to the prow to piss off the side of the bowsprit, though he seems to still be half-asleep and hasn’t noticed James yet. All the same, James shifts his weight outside Will’s cabin door, wanting to be let in but too guilt-riddled to knock.

When Will emerges, shortly before the true dawn, he looks about immediately—and when he sees James, the way his face falls makes it clear that he was hoping the events of the night before had been a dream. The disappointment is quickly replaced by a neutral expression. He inclines his head in James’s direction, but says nothing, simply strides away along the deck, up toward the prow where the man has finished his business and disappeared belowdeck again.

Against his better judgment, James follows. He feels horribly like a dog padding after its master, but what choice does he have? Though Will doesn’t seem to want his company, and can hardly be blamed for that, James doubts he’d like it any better were James to roam the ship and distract the crew, or continue rifling through his possessions as he did last night. So he follows, watching from a few steps behind, as Will squints out at the brightening horizon, leaning with both elbows on the gunwale.

Just as James opens his mouth to mention the black mist, Will speaks. “Pretty bright today,” he says. “Haven’t seen this much sun in a while.”

The remarks could be to anyone, or to the empty air. James hesitates. “Because of the mist?”

“Yes, but it isn’t mist.”

“Right.” James looks out at it: the oppressive, low-hanging clouds of gray, weak light filtering through. “You think they’re souls? Returning from the grave?”

Will’s sigh is evident in the rise and fall of his shoulders. “From what I can tell, that’s the only explanation.”

“And what can you tell?” James presses.

Will turns to face him, leaning backwards with his arms crossed. “Well, you’re here, so at least one soul has returned. But beyond that…” He pauses. Backlit, his face is in shadow. “The souls I take on board this ship,” he says, “they’re not like you, they look—alive, or nearly so. And when I bring them to where they’re meant to be, they turn to mist. Then even the mist is gone.” He gives a jab of his chin over his shoulder. “Yet here is the mist. And you.”

James ignores the pointed tone of the last addition. “Why?”

“That’s what I intend to find out.”

“How?”

Will gives a dark chuckle. “I had thought—well, it seems a bit drastic, but I had thought of summoning Calypso.”

The name drops from Will’s lips far too easily for James’s liking. “You mean the—goddess,” he says. He knows he should be well used to this talk of deities and magic—he spent the last months of his life surrounded by men touched by magic, and here he is, a ghost himself now—yet his mind rebels. “Surely you don’t _know_ her.”

There’s a flicker of confusion in Will’s eyes. “Ah, I see,” he says a moment later, “Beckett didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

It turns out to be the most far-fetched story James has encountered in his life or death. Yet Will tells the tale without a hint of humor—a mystic living in the saltwater bayou of Cuba who brought men back from the dead and turned out, in the end, to be the goddess herself imprisoned in flesh. “When we released her from that body,” Will finishes, “once she’d spent her fury on our ships, she had become one with the sea again. As it should be,” he adds, frowning.

James isn’t entirely sure that he agrees, given the violence and destruction of the tale, but he moves on in the interest of a more pressing question: “How do you intend to summon her, if she’s been beyond your reach for—what—eighty years?”

“I think she will come if I call.” Will pushes off of the gunwale to begin a meandering path across the deck, where more crewmembers have begun to work with rope and sail. As James passes, he notes that they stare—but as soon as they notice him return their gazes, they look away. “You see, in these eighty years, I have done my duty well. Better than Jones, certainly.”

“And you think in her gratitude she will simply answer all your questions?” James can’t keep the disbelief from his tone, despite his best efforts. “She’s the sea, Will. This is not—”

“I know what it is and isn’t.” Will turns abruptly to face him as they ascend the stairs to the aftercastle. “She will answer me. She must. These souls are in her charge—she must know what is bringing them back.” His expression is stony. “She _will_ answer,” he repeats.

James doesn’t have the heart—or perhaps the courage—to challenge him further. Neither does he know where they are headed, however, so he lingers around the stern as they make a heading towards what turns out to be the shallows off of some unknown island. The land appears far-off, shrouded in mist as it is, though it’s midday. James watches uncertainly as Will, just out of earshot, converses with one of the men. Will gestures to the looming, shadowed island. The man, one hand hooked in the pistol-strap across his chest, shakes his head and says something else, at which Will points directly downward.

The crewman’s response escapes James. He is focused on Will, who has turned abruptly from the conversation and is coming in his direction. This is, he thinks, the time when he ought to tell him about the black mist, ask him if he’s encountered it before.

“Are you ready?” Will asks.

“Ready for—the—Calypso?” James falters, his thoughts scattering in the face of his sudden unease. “Here? Truly?”

Will shoots him a look of fairly withering scorn. “Going ashore is not an option for me,” he says, as if James’s concern is merely a practical one and has nothing to do with the sheer, absurd folly of summoning a goddess—a goddess who has, by Will’s own account, a temper beyond reckoning. “And I would hear what she has to say sooner rather than later.”

“Before the crew mutinies out of terror?” James asks, watching the crewman go belowdecks, scowling.

“Before there are any other surprises,” Will counters. “The last thing I need is for Jack Sparrow to return from the grave as well. One ghost is quite enough.”

It’s the harshest thing he’s said so far, and despite his ever-present guilt, it’s cutting enough that this time James also feels a spark of anger. He bites his tongue to keep from responding in kind—what defense could he offer?—and says instead, “You still haven’t mentioned how you plan to get her attention. What are you going to do, ask nicely?”

In answer, Will pulls a knife from his belt. “Something like that.” Before James can register his confusion, or indeed bring up the subject of the mist at last, Will heads to the starboard rail and, as far as James can see, slits his palm and holds it out over the sea washing beneath. Whatever Will says, the wind doesn’t carry his words back to James, but his lips are moving as he gazes down at the water.

“She’s bloodthirsty as well as tempestuous?” James asks, walking up to join him.

The blood drips from Will’s fingers. “The sea is always bloodthirsty.” He lifts his gaze from his hand to the wide horizon. “You of all people should know that.”

“It was Jones that killed me, not the sea,” James points out. “As he killed you.”

“And Calypso made Jones what he was, wouldn’t you say?”

“What I made him, William, was no more than him already was.” The voice comes from behind them, and James turns to see a woman, umber-skinned and tall, standing on the port side as if she has just climbed over the gunwale and out of the sea. Indeed, her twisted locks are dripping wet, and rivulets of seawater run from her bare shoulders.

If James weren’t already aware that this is a goddess, Will’s reaction would, he thinks, give him no reason to suspect that were the case. “My lady,” he says, and bows, but not obscenely low, as if they might be meeting at some cotillion. When he rises he appears calm, cool even—serious, but not afraid.

Calypso, for her part, regards him with an appraising lift of her chin. “What is it you want?”

“Information, my lady.” Will comes forward a few paces and James stays resolutely where he is. “In recent months, souls have been returning from their graves. I do not know why, nor how to make it stop—but I would do what I can to right the balance, if you will help me.”

“You.” Calypso’s eyes move, with startling suddenness, to James. “You are one such soul?”

“He is,” Will says. James notices that her gaze does not return to him. “The greatest number of them are simply mist, however.” When Calypso does not reply, he says, a faint hint of indignation in his voice, “You must have noticed the souls—the mist, surely?”

She gives a wave of her hand, as if the question is meaningless. “The water is deep, William. This mist, to me it is no more than the spray before your ship.” At last she looks out over the water, and James feels almost as if he has been released from some invisible bond that had held him frozen under her gaze. He watches, apprehensive, as Calypso turns her head this way and that, taking in the mist. The way she moves is fluid, natural, but unearthly at the same time.

After several minutes have gone by in silence, Will speaks again. “Is it true? Are they souls?” It’s the first time he has given voice to the possibility that they might _not_ be, James notices, and thinks that he detects an uncertain note in Will’s voice.

But Calypso answers without turning. “They are.”

“Indeed.” Will flashes a look at James that is too full of meaning to interpret. Just as quickly, he looks back to Calypso. “Why are they here?”

A strange, fey smile spreads over Calypso’s face as she faces them. “Ah, William,” she says, and her eyes are dancing. “You don’t know?”

From Will’s face, it’s clear he’s at a loss. “What am I to know?”

“They are called,” Calypso says. “By a discontent. A longing. It draws them, the lost, back from beyond.”

“What do they long for?”

Calypso’s gaze moves to the mist again, passing over James, who shivers. “One restless spirit stirs others in its wake,” she says by way of answer, though it only deepens James’s confusion.

“My lady.” Yes, James hears it: a tense undercurrent to the words, a fraying rope that might snap. And though Will’s voice is polite, there is something hard in his face as he watches Calypso. “As I said, I would like to return them to where they belong.”

“And what if,” she says, “they will not go?”

Will looks incensed. James, for his part, is still utterly bewildered, but thinks it better to stay silent. “I am the captain of the _Flying Dutchman,_ ” Will says, “and this task was your doing—to ferry souls. They will go where I tell them, will they not?” She simply surveys him, the same faint smile on her lips. “If you will just tell me how to do it, where to go,” Will presses, “I will set it right.”

“What do you know of right?” Calypso demands, and though she does not raise her voice, James’s stomach lurches in sudden foreboding. Her smile is gone. “I do not forget, William, you loved the one who took the name of those who bound me. And this one”—she flings a hand in James’s direction—“him would have bound me again to see the world as him wanted it.”

“Help me and I swear I will ferry him back again,” Will says, heedless of the way the ship is rocking, the smack of the waves audible over the rising wind. “And all the others with him.”

“The others can drown again, and a thousand times over,” Calypso says bitterly. “Only one soul has brought them here, and only one can let them return. And it is not him.”

The flash of her eyes is so strong, James almost fancies it burns him; however, he is more concerned with the groaning of the deck beneath them and the terrible thought of the crew trapped below. The ship lurches to port as if it means to break itself on the rocks. “Will,” James urges, and doesn’t say: _finish this._ Before every living thing on board is killed.

But Calypso seems unreachable in her anger. “Eighty years and now you call me? Like a mongrel to do your bidding?” The timbre of her voice is deep as the fathoms. “To blow your wood-and-bones to world’s end once more, and see you safely back, as I did then?” She laughs. The sound blends with the roaring wind. “I wear no prison now.”

At last, Will seems to feel the urgency of the situation; James can see something like fear in his face as he glances up at the snapping sails while his feet slide on the deck as it pitches. His mouth moves, forming words, but they are lost, and Calypso laughs again, deeper still. Her face grows dark. No—James realizes, turning in horror, that the darkness is the shadow of a wave, looming over the ship—green and massive and falling—falling—

The crash sweeps James off his feet and fills his lungs with saltwater. By the time he can breathe again, the deck is soaked but intact, and Calypso is nowhere to be seen. He scrambles up nevertheless, ready for another wave, but the sea appears calm again. James turns on the spot, realizing belatedly— “Will?”

“Here,” comes the rasping voice, and James rounds the wheel and railing to see Will disentangling his leg from a mess of ropes. Still coughing slightly, he pushes his hair out of his eyes. “That could have gone worse,” he says, looking at the muck of seaweed strewn across the ship, at the crew emerging from the hatch as quickly as they can.

James stares at him. “You’re mad.”

The barest hint of a smile touches Will’s mouth. “She told me exactly what I wanted to—what was that?”

He pauses, and James hears it too: a creaking and snapping coming from the center of the deck. Turning, he sees the crew looking around for the source of the noise. Then someone shouts and everyone scatters—the men hasten to the sides of the deck, pressing up against the gunwales. Staring upwards. James follows their gazes as the cry comes again, “It’s cracking—!”

“Oh, God,” Will says behind him, “the mast.” And now James sees it, the slow tilting of the mizzen towards them, a groan that grows louder. He turns back again, and Will is still standing there, watching it fall. The men are shouting, the wood is creaking, ropes are snapping like wet wood on a fire. “Come _on,”_ James urges, and reaches out to pull Will to one side with him—but he falls, and fetches up against the railing with the colossal thudding ringing in his ears.

When he turns around, hardly daring to look, James sees a jumble of ropes and sail and splintered wood before him—and on the other side of the aftercastle, Will, gripping the gunwale and staring back at him with his mouth half-open. As James watches, he blinks and draws breath to speak, but a call comes from the main deck. “Captain!”

Will turns toward the call. “Godwin. Anyone hurt?” He begins picking his way towards the staircase, sparing not a glance for James, who follows at a cautious distance.

“No.” The answer sounds a bit more brusque than reassuring, and as James approaches the rail, he sees the man who was talking to Will earlier, the last one to go belowdeck—Godwin, presumably—standing with his arms crossed, half the crew at his back. His gaze is fixed on Will, and he is clearly displeased. “She’s gone, then?”

“Yes, she’s gone.” Will takes out a knife and begins cutting at a rope in order to clear his way down the stairs; the mizzen is blocking him. “And without serious damage, thankfully.”

One of the men gives a pronounced scoff at this, but Godwin nods. “And did she say—why the mist? And how to stop it?”

Will, bending over the rope, does not answer immediately. James notices some of the men’s gazes have strayed to where he himself stands lingering near the wheel and he wishes for the umpteenth time that he were not glowing blue. True, the men don’t look overtly hostile, but there’s no doubt that they want nothing to do with them. He meets their eyes and some of them look away.

“Captain?” Godwin prompts. “What did she say?”

Will straightens, the rope still uncut. “The mist is made of souls returned from beyond the grave,” he says abruptly. “Called back by one soul in particular.” He cannot possibly miss the effect this has on the crew, some of whom look terrified, others, livid; however, his tone is unconcerned when he speaks again. “As for how to put it right, we must sail beyond world’s end.”

James quickly masks his frown, but none of the men are paying him any attention now. Several begin to shout, and though making out individual words is difficult, the meaning is clear. In truth, James half agrees with them. “Now, see here,” says a man whose head is scarred over on the left side, “we signed on to _ferry_ souls, not to go beyond with ‘em.” The others mutter in agreement. “Who’s to say the goddess won’t trap us there, or make us lose our way so’s we never come back?”

“Master Simmons, you are correct,” Will says, surprising both James and, by the look of it, half the crew. “But if we do not make this journey, there will _be_ no more ferrying of souls—or indeed any sailing at all, in mist like this.”

“I’d rather go back to cobbling than fall off the edge of the world,” someone says.

“Here, here,” says another.

“Might I remind you, I’ve made this journey before,” Will says. There’s a bite of impatience in his voice. “We won’t go astray.” He pauses, and the men gaze stubbornly back at him. “If you wish to leave the crew, you’re welcome to. But for the moment that’s neither here nor there, as you can hardly row back to Tortuga in a lifeboat. We’ll have to repair the mast first. Refresh the water supply, mend the sail. So hop to, if you want to go anywhere at all.”

The next hour is something of a miracle to James, who had half-expected the men to mutiny right then and there. Instead, however, they set about—not without a good deal of grumbling and dark looks—clearing the deck both of seaweed and the ruined mast. From what he overhears between lingering out of the way and drifting along behind Will, the plan is to bring a party ashore and harvest enough wood to repair the mizzen. Hardly out of the ordinary for any ship in their state.

“And the mainmast is listing, too,” Godwin says while the first boat is rowing out from the _Dutchman._ “Must’ve caught the mizzen’s rigging and been pulled. That, or the goddess…”

Will shakes his head. “I don’t want to hear it,” he says. “We had to take the risk of summoning her. It’s worth more than a couple broken masts.” From where James is standing, he can see Will turn his head to look Godwin in the face. “I wasn’t lying to the crew earlier. This was the only way.”

Godwin’s face is out of sight. “Aye, I know,” he says heavily. “And now we’ve no choice but to do what she said.”

There’s a trace of amusement in Will’s voice when he replies. “You sound like Simmons. You think it’s a trap, too?”

“I haven’t ruled it out.” Unless James is mistaken, Godwin is smiling. “Still, you _weren’t_ lying. Any thoughts on the heading we’ll take to the end of the world?”

“Leave it to me for now,” Will says.

“You’re the captain.”

Will claps him on the shoulder and leans over the rail to watch him descend the latter to the second waiting rowboat, where a couple rain-barrels are lowered down as well. When he turns around, his gaze falls on James, who can’t hide that he was watching. He expects Will’s face to harden and for him to turn away, as he has practically every time their eyes have met thus far, but to his surprise Will makes straight for him.

“You’re not going ashore?” James asks. There is hardly anyone left on board now, and those that remain are busy about their tasks.

“I can’t, can I?” Will says, suddenly brusque. “Not for another—four years, give or take.”

Of course. How could James have forgotten, one of the worst parts of the terrible curse, how could he not realize that Will is just as much chained to the ship as Jones was? And on the heels of that realization comes another. “Give or take?” he repeats. “You’re not sure?”

Will shrugs. “There’s nothing on land for me.”

“Better food,” James suggests.

Will doesn’t dignify that with a response. “We’ll be here for a few days, at least,” he says instead. “Repairing the mast, the sails, resupplying water. And the men will benefit from some leisure time.”

As he speaks, a small smile plays around his mouth. “So, she told you exactly what you wanted to hear?” James asks. “Sounded more like a load of bilge to me.”

Will looks at him consideringly. “I suppose it must have, yes.” He shakes his head and doesn’t elaborate. “If you’d like to go ashore, I suppose you’re welcome to,” he says. “I can’t imagine you’re longing to spend more time on board this particular ship.”

James can’t say that he is, but neither is he keen to impose his presence on the crew when Will isn’t there, given the way a few of them were looking at him earlier. “I think I’ll stay, actually,” he says. “It’s not as if I need the water or the rest.”

“You could help with repairs,” Will points out. As if he’s eager to have James gone. “I expect you’re solid enough to wield an axe, at least.”

“If you’d like to tell Simmons he’s to work alongside me when I’ve got a weapon…” James trails off as Will inclines his head in concession of the point, grinning. It’s the first true smile James has seen him wear, and it doesn’t sit well on his face. “You can fill me in while we wait,” James says, nevertheless emboldened by the sight of it. “Whatever Calypso said that’s so important. And there’s a lot to catch up on in eighty years, I’m sure.”

As soon as he says it, he knows it was a mistake. Too forward, too rash. “I don’t think you’d want to hear it,” Will says. “A great deal of racing about the seas with Elizabeth. Surely not a story you’d enjoy.” His voice is cold, the smile gone as if it had never been. “And not a happy ending, either.”

“I didn’t,” James starts, but finds himself at a loss for words. Now, truly, he feels as if he is looking into a stranger’s face: he seems ancient, as old as Calypso, but with none of her laughter, fleeting though it was. Instead there is only the crushing weight of the depths. “Will—” But Will is already brushing by him, leaving. “I’m sorry,” James says uselessly.

Will pauses at the words, his shoulders taut. One breath, two. Then he continues, crossing the deck as the third rowboat is lowered and closing the door of his cabin behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr](http://blanketed-in-stars.tumblr.com)! Comments are love <3


	3. Foul Wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Foul wind: a wind blowing against the direction of travel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are lots of ways to splice a rope; since in this case it would be necessary to be able to put the spliced section through pulleys without much of a change in width, I chose to use the "long splice" and I have no idea if another splice would actually have been more appropriate. But if you're as excited about minutiae as I am: [learn how to do a long splice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=522&v=sN-cnO8Fqrc)!

James haunts the landward-facing deck till he sickens of it, till the night comes on and he can no longer see even the vaguest hint of shore. He remembers almost fondly the sight of the final members of the crew striking out for the shore; the mist had swallowed them up almost immediately, their voices drowned by the knocking of the sea. And so James finds himself alone once more—and this time utterly so. Will, in his stony exile, hardly counts. Even the cat, Fascine, is gone; she went with the first boat.

He keeps an eye out for a fire peeking through the fog, but none appears. Nor does any of the black mist. All night he waits anxiously—not wanting to relive that terror, but more intrigued than he expects, and somewhat eager to lose his spectral glow if only for a moment or two—but he waits in vain.

The sun rises on more pearly mist. As it climbs, there is no noise or sign from Will’s cabin. At last, bored and irritated and guilty, James raps on the door. “If you are hiding in there to avoid talking to me, there’s no need,” he calls through. “We needn’t speak to one another. But I’d much rather you were out here so something would move besides the rigging.” There’s no response. “The men won’t be back for another day or two. Plenty of time for us to go back to ignoring each other. Or, well, you ignoring me. You know, I can stand here all day, I don’t need to eat or—”

The door swings open to reveal Will, who is, predictably, scowling. “For the love of God, stop shouting,” he says.

“Thank you,” James replies.

Will doesn’t even roll his eyes. “You’re bored out here, is that it? I don’t suppose you thought to make yourself useful.”

James pauses with his mouth half-open. It’s true, he hadn’t considered doing much other than tossing the occasional remaining scrap of seaweed off the deck—the notion that he oughtn’t go into the crew’s quarters is quite strong, and the conviction not to poke around Will’s ship is yet stronger. “Waiting for orders, Captain,” James says after a moment, unable to keep the caustic tone from his voice.

It looks for a moment as if Will would like to order him to throw himself overboard, or perhaps just to shut the door in his face. In the end, he stalks forward and throws open the hatch in one smooth movement, descending halfway down the steps before giving James a look that plainly asks why he hasn’t followed yet. James hurries to do so, and blinks in the dimmer light below.

“Many of the ropes snapped when the mast fell,” Will says, lighting a lantern and leading the way even farther belowdecks, into the stores. “They must be spliced before we can rig up the sail. You know how?”

James surveys the pile of tangled, frayed rope in uneven lengths. “Of course I know how.”

“Good.” But instead of leaving him to it, Will hangs the lantern from the ceiling and sits down on an overturned barrel, picks up two pieces and starts separating out the strands.

Cautiously, James sits as well—not beside him—and does the same. They work in silence for several minutes, James contemplating just what Will wants from him, until he can bear it no longer and has to speak. “Were you _making yourself useful_ holed up in your cabin? Not bored, I suppose?”

Will scoffs. “I was balancing the accounts. None of the men has a head for numbers, not even Godwin.”

“Balancing the accounts,” James repeats, and pauses in the middle of tying off two strands. “I am amazed this ship even has accounts,” he confesses. “Wouldn’t think you’d buy or sell anything, being crewed by the damned.”

“The damned? No.” Will shakes his head, his eyes on his work. “I am not Jones.”

He says it with such depth of feeling that James has to wonder at it—how deep the conviction goes. How much of Will’s life is driven by it. “Your crew—they’re alive?”

“Every man,” Will says, nodding. His eyes flick up to James, who hastily resumes weaving and tying the strands. “They need food and rum and tobacco, and when they decide they’ve had enough I pay them before they go ashore. So, yes, I was balancing the accounts.”

“You pay them?” James knows he’s simply repeating everything Will says, but he doesn’t understand. “I thought—I mean, the _Dutchman_ is a ghost ship. It’s sailed since—well, for centuries. And you mean to say you have a crew that—comes and goes as they please, to the end of the world and back?”

Will gives him a curt nod.

“Truly?”

“You know, it’s curious,” Will says, “how many men still want the adventure of it. The purpose. They remind me of myself.” He doesn’t sound nostalgic, though, or amused—no, James thinks, he sounds bitter. “As I once was.”

It pricks like a needle in James’s heart, the memory that comes with the words—Will smiling at him in a sunlit room, the air golden, his eyes sweet and voice softer than the dawn. _When I hear the sea,_ he’d said, _sometimes I want to leave all of this behind and become a different man, never again on land._ Words gilded as if by the sunrise, a moment as unrecognizable now as James feels himself. “You don’t care for the adventures now,” James says, meaning it as a question, but it comes out flat.

“Oh, it’s all the same adventure,” Will replies. “But I feel as if the story ought to have ended long ago.”

Again, James feels wrong-footed, more and more as if he’s feeling out the edges of a precipice without being able to see where it begins or how deep it goes. Cautious of asking too much. “Your crew, if they are alive,” he says abruptly, “don’t they hate it—going underwater, you know, the way Jones always—?”

Will cuts him off. “I am not Jones, I said. We sail the normal way. And, no,” he adds, perhaps guessing at James’s next question, “they don’t mind ferrying the souls, either. That’s the chief reason they join up, as a matter of fact.” He still looks subdued, but his voice no longer sounds so brittle.

“Well.” James hesitates to mention it, but he can’t resist. “They don’t seem pleased about it this time.”

“Indeed. I expect Calypso frightened them.”

“She frightened _me,_ Will—but not you?” he adds quickly, sensing rather than seeing a frown.

Will lays one section of rope aside, joined as smoothly as if it had never frayed, and moves on to another. “She came when I called,” he says, “did she not?”

“Yes, and she wrecked your ship and nearly killed you. And your crew.”

But Will does not appear concerned even at the reminder of danger. “If she had killed me, who would have ferried the souls? It is her job,” he says, yanking on a stiff strand. “She gave the task to me. She came because I asked.”

James hesitates, unconvinced. “She cares little enough for you,” he says. Too blunt, perhaps, but the truth, and Will would have to be foolish beyond belief not to know already. “She did not even give you answers.”

“Ah, but she did,” Will says, and there is a note of triumph in his voice. “I asked why the souls were returning, and she told me.”

“She said—that they are called by another soul, yes. But I cannot see how that tells you anything.”

“Not simply another soul.” Will’s voice is quiet. “A discontented one. Restless. Longing, she said.”

James gazes at him, apparently missing something. “And—? You have some idea of who that might be?”

Now Will looks up from his splicing again. “Don’t you? Calypso as good as said her name.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “It’s Elizabeth, James.”

For several moments, James cannot muster up even a single word to say in response. He’s silent for so long that Will goes back to splicing, wearing an irritated expression, and James follows suit almost numbly. He watches the rope move between his glowing fingers as if someone else is performing the task. _Elizabeth._ Strange, how hearing her name in Will’s voice hurts: it is not a simple pain. He opens his mouth but cannot think of an answer. Is not sure that Will is even waiting for one. He clears his throat. “When did she—?” He cannot say it.

Whatever he might have expected, it was clearly not that; nevertheless, Will does not hesitate before he speaks. “Twenty years ago,” he says.

James nods. “A long life,” he replies. Meaningless words.

But Will is silent now. Looking up, James sees his knuckles white on the rope. When he catches James’s glance, Will relaxes his grip, but his mouth is a sharp line.

“She was there,” James hears himself say. “When—Jones killed me.” Though it wasn’t Jones, he remembers; but there is no need to bring up that particular truth now.

“I know.”

“You know?”

“She told me.” Will looks at him as if he’s unbearably dense. “She was my wife. She told me.”

James wonders if he is imagining the tiny hint of pride: _my_ wife. Though he knows Elizabeth was never truly anyone’s—at the least, James knows she was never his, would never have wanted that. Which he knew long before his death. He cannot meet Will’s eyes. “Of course.”

“She told me how you saved her life,” Will continues, and now James does jerk his head up, but it is to see Will once again bent over his work.

“That…” James battles with words unspoken, questions he doesn’t want to ask. “It hardly made up for all the wrong I’d done.” And yet: he feels a prick of something dark, halfway between guilt and jealousy, thinking of how he had kissed her in those last, desperate moments. She had known he was lost, she must have. One final kiss for a dead man. And to think of it now, with Will across from him and surely, deservedly hating him—no, the pain is not simple at all.

—

“And you believe—you believe that the cause of all this is _Elizabeth?”_ James asks when they finally emerge from the hold. He had genuinely half-forgotten what Will had said, so disturbed was he by the sudden mention of her name, the way she had suddenly become a resurrected ghost between them. Now, however, the mist making an oppressive whiteness about the ship, he remembers. “Truly, Will, what gave you that idea?”

In contrast to his previous conviction, Will looks almost as if he would like to avoid the subject. Even so, he answers easily. “It isn’t an idea, it is the truth.”

“Convince me,” James challenges.

“Elizabeth is dead,” Will says, his jaw taut as he leads James along the deck and into his cabin. “But she is not gone. Not beyond our reach. She is out there”—his hand waves toward the mist-shrouded windows—“somewhere, and her spirit is causing others to return.”

“How do you know I am not the cause?” James points out. He doesn’t think it particularly likely, but he considers that awful tugging in his chest that he felt when he first surfaced in the waves, the tension which even now is not gone, only deadened to a constant, muted ache.

But Will has an answer for this as well. “Calypso said so,” he replies simply. “And more than that—you _have_ returned. What is there left for you to long for?” There is a moment, a heartbeat— “If it were you, all the other souls would have departed by now.”

James lets it pass. “What does Elizabeth have to long for?” he counters. “She lived her life.”

Will sighs. It’s a long, low hiss of breath, out through his nose as he looks down, his expression inscrutable. He turns to the table and begins shifting through the papers still lying there atop an open ledger, making neater piles. “If you have to ask, then you would never understand,” he says, his voice quite steady.

“Will, please.” James feels exasperation rise bubbling in his throat, near to anger, but tempered by confusion. “You said yourself that she lived nearly eighty years. Why would she be discont—”

He breaks off, shocked, as Will turns around and makes to grab him by the shoulder or the front of his coat—James isn’t sure, but Will’s hand passes through him as if he weren’t there, and James recalls vividly his attempt to push Will aside as the mast fell. In the next moment, the memory is driven from his mind as he realizes that Will, though unable to touch him, is glaring at him with a trembling fury, all the more terrifying for its coldness. Never, he thinks, never—Will has never looked at him like this, not through all the pain James has caused him. “We were to live and die together,” he says, “but she died and I am here. What would she _long_ for? She chose me, and I was—I was hers, body and soul.” His eyes are dark, fathomless. “Who have you ever belonged to but yourself?”

He turns away violently, as if he would like to shove James away from him. Goes back to the table and picks up a sheet of paper, but it trembles in his shaking hand.

James stays frozen where he is, his throat tight and a searing pain in his chest. Truly, there is no jealousy in him now; only a horrified pity, and something softer beneath it. He aches to speak, but what could he possibly say? Would Will ever hear him? In his hesitation, his eyes fall on Will’s back—Will, who has stridden deeper into the cabin and now stands half-swallowed by the shadows as if it is evening rather than mid-afternoon. He has left the paper on the table and stands with one hand on the dusty organ, leaning on it, his head bowed. “Will,” James says, at a loss, “I’m sorry.”

Will shows no reaction at his name, nor at the apology he speaks. One word. “Go.”

So James goes.

—

Night falls again. James wonders if he has finally done it: hurt Will so badly that he will no longer care. He is not fool enough to imagine that he might have undone any forgiveness he had earned—he knows there had never been any forgiveness in the first place. Will he leave James to the mercy of his crew, or perhaps summon back Calypso to put an end to him? Will she be more willing to finish him than to help Will?

James nearly wishes for the crewman from his first night on the ship, the one who had said that Will had—what?—been in a _right state._ He wants to ask whether that state was anything other than furious. Beyond that, the conversation might be pleasant as well, something more than the cold silence that Will exudes whenever he appears on deck over the next day. Even Simmons might be welcome. Or at least the cat.

As if in answer to his hesitant prayers, a rowboat appears on the third day, a single man inside it. He rows from the direction of the island, which is still nothing more than an unknown shape dark within the mist—James cannot imagine that it’s easy to make out the ship from land, either, but the man rows alongside the bow and calls up for a ladder.

James hesitates—ought he to call for Will?—and then decides against it. Will went belowdecks some time ago and James would rather not force a conversation, even one as brief as this. So he goes and fetches the ladder, throws it over and fastens it at the rail. He watches as the man ties off his little boat and begins the climb.

He reaches the deck without an appearance from Will, and it’s not a man James has particularly noticed before. Dark golden skin, a short dagger at his hip—and a bruise swelling along his jaw. “Where’s the captain?” he asks James, stepping away from him as soon as he’s climbed over.

“Is something the matter?” James deflects.

“I need to speak to the captain,” the man insists. The enclosing mist twists his accented voice strangely, so that it seems too loud after so much silence.

It is beyond irritating, to be accounted so little, even if James can well understand why—but his frustration is reaching a breaking point, and perhaps that is what makes him say, “He is indisposed.” The man looks him up and down as if James were a snake half-hidden in tall grass: suspicious, ready to take action. It strikes James that he must think James has done something to Will, hurt him—how ironic—and he rushes to allay the fear. “He’s belowdecks.”

Having got what he’s after, the man descends through the hatch without another glance for James, who stands silently warring with himself for a moment, then hits the gunwale with his fist and follows him.

The man has already vanished, into the powder store it seems, since it’s from there that the low voices are issuing. James skirts the doorway and leans on the wall outside, just close enough to catch the words, yet out of sight.

“And it’s not right,” the man is saying heatedly. “What you did.”

“I saved her life,” Will replies shortly.

“Is that what you call it?”

“What would _you_ call it?”

The man scoffs, a disbelieving huff. “Press-ganging.”

“For the love of—” Will breaks off, and James thinks he can hear a smile in his voice, but he does not sound remotely amused. “You’re free to go ashore, you know that. As soon as we make berth, and I swear I’ll not hinder you nor lead any man to ask questions.”

“Yes, but when are we going to make berth?” the man demands. “Before we sail off on this foolish quest of yours, or after?”

“Before,” Will says firmly. “Until then, though, there’s little I can do for you.”

“Meaning?”

“Stop picking fights with Simmons.”

“This wasn’t Simmons,” the man says, grudgingly.

There’s silence for a moment, and James strains to hear, thinking he’s missing something. Then he hears Will laugh—not the tight chuckle that’s been all he’s heard since he came aboard, but a true laugh, with full breath and a sound that must be Will clapping the man on the shoulder. “You ought to pick your battles, in any case,” Will says. “I cannot help you if you are determined to put yourself in harm’s way.”

“You might make it a bit less necessary.”

“And get myself killed, too?” Will says lightly, rather too dismissive, James thinks, of the dark tone in the other man’s voice. “You had better get back to your boat, or they will all wonder what’s become of you. Simmons might get curious.”

James has enough time to throw himself back towards the stairs and hurry back up out of the hold, but just barely. He thinks the man might have caught a glimpse of his glowing ankles, damn them, as James ran up the last step—but he does his best to lean convincingly leisurely against the rail as the man climbs up after him, scowling. Will appears after him, his face again a careful blank.

“Another day or two, perhaps less,” is all the man says in parting: James can catch it from where he stands, though the man is facing away.

“Keep out of trouble,” Will replies with a sharp grin, more tooth than anything else. He stands at the rail while the man climbs down the ladder and gets back into his boat, and then Will hauls the ladder up again. Hand over hand, no longer smiling.

James, still leaning on the rail several yards away, is vividly reminded of the moment three days earlier as the last boat had disappeared shoreward—the echo of it now makes him aware that Will has not been glaring at him, nor indicating any sort of ill will in the minute and a half he’s been abovedecks. He is not naive enough to think for a moment that the animosity might actually be gone; nevertheless, he senses that now may be the only chance he gets to speak to Will alone before they set sail again. So he makes his slow, nonchalant way along the rail towards Will until they are standing side by side.

Will doesn’t look around, but keeps his gaze on the spot where the boat vanished, as if he can still see its imprint in the mist, which is darkening in the coming evening. “Yes?” The word is clipped and expectant.

James weighs his words carefully. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Will’s face. “Does he get in fights often?”

There is no change in Will’s expression. “Often enough.”

“With Simmons?” James risks. Boredom and frustration, it seems, have made him rash.

“Often enough,” Will says again. Then, as if suspicious, he says quietly, “Moreno is a good man.”

“A good man who picks fights?”

“He doesn’t truly start them,” Will says, shaking his head. “And if he did, would that not remind you of someone?”

James looks over to see Will looking back, guarded amusement in his eyes. “You never started your fights, either,” he points out. “I think you simply never knew how to abandon them.”

Something less than a smile flickers around Will’s mouth. “I wasn’t talking about me.”

“Ah.” There she is again, as if she had never left. James supposes she hadn’t. He hesitates to say her name, wondering if this is some test from Will of James’s repentance, but—if Will wants something from him, James cannot deny him, even if it hurts them both, even if it means his own ruin. “Elizabeth,” James says slowly, “knew which fights to start and which to pass by.”

“She only ever started the ones she knew she could win,” Will agrees—or is it an agreement? He’s still looking at James and there is no hostility in his gaze at the moment, but his jaw is set, his brow furrowed slightly. As if trying to place his own thoughts inside James’s mind through sheer force of will. “She started this one as well, James. And we _will_ find her.”

James looks away, turns his gaze back on the pressing mist to buy himself time. “I know you won’t stop until we do,” he admits. It comes to him then that Will has said _we_ —and that James himself has followed suit, accepting the plan even as he still wishes somehow to waylay it. This plan that Will has now decided will include him, despite the pain, despite the anger. Well, James thinks wryly—any port in a storm.

Evening falls without a star, but that is no longer unusual. What is unusual is Will’s invitation, consisting of an open door and an inclined head, that James join him in his cabin. Will pours himself a goblet of rum. “It’s strange,” he remarks, stoppering the jug again and falling into his chair. “Being landbound as we are, I realize—we’ve not ferried a soul in months.”

“What have you been doing in all that time?” James asks.

“Roaming,” Will says, and takes a drink. “Following the usual routes. But if anyone is there, we must miss them in all the mist. Or perhaps they are part of the mist, too, even without passing on first.”

James is not sure why Will’s gaze is fixed on him. “The usual routes?”

“The paths of the ships,” Will explains. “Along the reefs where they run aground, or wherever there are battles. And the trade routes, too.” He drinks again. “There are a thousand ways to die at sea.”

Against his will, James wonders where Elizabeth died. Whether Will ferried her over himself or if she left before he even knew it. He wishes he had not wondered it. But he thinks perhaps this is the reason Will is still eyeing him with some speculation—no, surely not. “You must know the routes well, after so long.”

Will nods. “Better than Jones did.”

“You know, I was meaning to ask,” James begins, seizing on something towards which to steer the conversation, far better than whatever Will is aiming for. “You say you are not like Jones, but surely you did have to—to cut—?” He falters in spite of himself.

“Of course,” Will says smoothly.

“Yes.” And now James does not know what to say, his eyes drawn almost guiltily to the place where there must be a scar beneath the white shirt. Another alongside the other scars James remembers Will having. He used to trace them, sentimental, giddy at all their various escapes from death, frightened of the possibility—young. His thoughts run wild now, his mind both in the dark cabin and on an island of white sand, digging with a spade. If he had known then, on that day—

“It’s hidden in much the same way,” Will says, pulling James back to the present. “Not in the same place, but—there was a certain logic to the way Jones did it, was there not? To bury your heart where even you cannot reach it.”

“But anyone else can,” James reminds him.

“No one wants to kill me,” Will says. His voice is almost mournful, as if he finds this unfortunate. “No, the danger is not from everyone else.”

James has to force himself to confront the thought; his mind rebels in horror. “The _Dutchman_ needs a captain,” he protests. “What would happen, in any case, if you were to do it?”

Will shrugs and takes a deep swallow from his goblet. “There is a certain… curiosity, I must admit. And I am tired.”

Yes, James believes it, looking at him. Particularly in the low candlelight, with the rum a flush in Will’s cheeks, his voice quiet and so matter-of-fact. “Why have you not done it yet?” he asks.

“Once every ten years,” Will reminds him.

“You could have your men bring it on board.”

“I suppose.” Will contemplates the last of his rum. “Truly? I have been afraid.” He tosses back the last mouthful.

James watches him unstopper the jug and pour himself another goblet. “Surely you have the least cause of anyone to be afraid of death,” he says.

Will smiles and raises his cup as if in a toast. He drinks, then pauses, surveying James over the rim. He drinks again and sets the goblet down. “I am not sure if I have ever seen death,” he says. The words are flat and nearly cold, but James does not think he means any anger by them. “The souls we ferry look almost alive. They do not speak, not like you.”

Once again, James finds himself pinioned by Will’s fixed, intent gaze. It has the expectant quality that his voice had earlier, at the rail—no, not expectant. More urgent than that. “Have you tried to talk to them?” James asks, another weak attempt to evade the question he fears is coming.

“In the beginning, yes.” Will shrugs. “They hardly hear us, or even seem to see us. They are apart.”

“But _you_ died,” James points out.

“I died,” Will agrees, “but I became something else. I never left.” He fingers the stem of his goblet, his eyes on James. “Even when we bring the souls to the edge, they go on without us. So I do not truly know where they go, or what it is like there.”

The question is there, on the verge of being asked, and James can hear how it will sound in Will’s voice—dreadful, breathless, full of hope and fear and terrible need, and he is not sure how he will answer. Can he feign a lack of understanding, can he lie— _I was never there, either_ —can he tell Will that living souls are not allowed to know, can he withstand the look that is already growing on Will’s face? He waits as if for the hanged man’s drop. Resists the urge to close his eyes.

And the silence stretches on. No question is asked—yet it envelops the room as if it, too, were a mist; James fancies he can see the words gathering on Will’s lips. And still it remains unasked. Slowly, a crawling on the skin, it dawns on James: Will is not going to ask him. He said he was afraid, and he is. He would rather wait for an answer than invite it himself. But two can play this game—and James is not going to speak unless asked. No, he will not say.

The moments pass like drops in the ocean. After a time, Will’s eyes leave James and return to his goblet, to his hands, his gaze goes somewhere inside. “I suppose we will follow them over the edge soon enough,” he says at last, so soft as to be nearly silent.

Again, the _we,_ the implicit suggestion that James is not going anywhere, that they will go on to the end together. Fighting the tightness in his chest, James nods. “I suppose so.”

Will smiles. The danger is back in his eyes. “We’ll repair the mast tomorrow, set sail the day after. We have lingered here long enough already.”

In the words, James can see a ghost: an impatient boy, always looking to the horizon, with hands that were rough but kind and eager for something precious to hold. “You know there is no risk of waiting too long,” he says. “She is not going to get any farther away.”

“There is the crew to consider,” Will reminds him. “Their patience can stretch only so thin.”

It puts James in mind of a knife balancing on its point. “What will you do if they leave?” he asks.

“What will I do?” Will repeats, as if he doesn’t understand.

“How will you get there,” James presses. “Beyond.”

Will drains his cup again. “If I must,” he says, taking up the jug once more, his gaze dark and bitter as the rum, “I will swim.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr](http://blanketed-in-stars.tumblr.com/)! Comments are love <3


	4. Under Sail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Under sail: in motion (powered by the wind, sails unfurled).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The shanty Godwin & the crew are singing is "Hanging Johnny" - you can listen to two versions of it [here](http://brethrencoast.com/shanty/Hanging_Johnny.html) and [here](http://www.contemplator.com/sea/hanging.html), and you can find more lyrics [here](http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/sea-shanty/Hanging_Johnny.htm). Also, the process of raising a mast is complicated and I definitely took some liberties for dramatic effect, but you can read about it [on quora (sorry)](https://www.quora.com/How-did-ships-replace-a-broken-mast-while-at-sea-in-the-age-of-sailing) or [here](https://medium.com/@okopnik/how-did-ships-replace-a-broken-mast-while-at-sea-in-the-age-of-sailing-7752bb40b3f4).

James steps to one side of the rope as it falls and slaps the deck where he had been standing. Looking up, he sees four men sitting on the yard of the main mast, one of them reaching futilely after the rope.

“I don’t pay you to doze off, Vicar!” bellows Godwin from James’s left.

“You don’t pay me!” Vicar shouts back. It’s difficult to tell at this distance, but he looks to be grinning.

Godwin scowls as another man grabs the loose end of the rope and scrambles up the mast with it. “Then it’s the captain’s money you’re wasting, aren’t you?”

Vicar takes the rope once more. He fastens it to the yard on which he sits and whistles to the man waiting below him, who clambers astride as well and takes up a rope tossed from one of the other men. “He ought to pay me double for this!” Vicar yells down. He adds something else, but it is lost in a sudden wind.

“I’ll give you double,” Godwin says roughly to nobody in particular. He squints up at the mast for a moment more, then turns to survey the group of men spread along the newly-splinted mizzen, ready to lift it when called to do so. “Where’s David?” he demands.

“Here,” says a voice, hurrying up onto the deck, and James sees that it belongs to the man whose sharp chin he recognizes—the man who spoke to him on his first night aboard the _Dutchman,_ the one who ran from the black mist. The man—David, apparently—joins the rest of those poised to lift the mizzen. He’s much slighter than the rest of them, however; James thinks he would probably do better up in the rigging, in Vicar’s place. Though there are already so many men sitting on the main mast that it looks rather like a tree full of roosting ravens.

And then, as James watches, a man down the line from David gives him a sharp look. “What’re you playing at, bird-bones?” Moreno, standing next to David, the bruise still livid on his jaw, laughs.

David steps back from the rest, out of the way. He doesn’t look offended or irritated—in fact, it’s strange, but he looks almost as blank-faced as Will when he is trying to hide something. His eyes are on the ropes that stretch up to the main mast’s yard, his arms folded.

“Right,” Godwin shouts, “now’s the time, lads! Don’t let your hands slip!” He sucks in a huge breath and sings out: “They call me Hanging Johnny!”

 _“Away, boys, away!”_ the men chorus, heaving in time.

“They say I hang for money!”

_“So hang, boys, hang down!_

“They say I hanged my mother!”

_“Away, boys, away!”_

“My sisters and my brothers!”

_“So hang, boys, hang down!_

As James watches, the mast lifts slowly upward at an angle. Up on the main yards, Vicar and the others are hauling, and on the deck men peel off two at a time as the butt of the mizzen lifts out of their reach and hurry to other ropes, which they fasten to winches on the deck.

James knows how to repair a mast—he could hardly have become captain without that knowledge, let alone an admiral—but, in his good fortune, no ship under his command had ever required it. Now he watches with interest and a fair amount of trepidation as David, at a sharp wave from Godwin, begins climbing the stump of the mizzen. It’s broken more than eight yards off the deck, James figures, high enough that he is impressed with how quickly David rises—easily, as if he does not notice how far up he is, or care how much a fall would hurt.

“Good Lord,” James breathes, as David hops lightly up to stand balanced on the stump and reaches out to guide the butt of the mizzen towards himself. Still the men are singing, with Godwin keeping them steady—“A rope, a beam, a ladder, I’ll hang you all together!”—as the men in the yards continue to heave. David lashes the stump and the butt together, loose but taking in the slack as it comes, and now the men begin to pull in earnest, raising it closer to upright with every haul on the line. Up, up the mast goes, while David, clinging to some foothold too small to see, steers the lowering butt of the mizzen to the place where his feet had been moments before. And then he slips.

The mast teeters, wobbling at an angle, and the men above shout, as does Moreno from his place at one of the winches. James looks around to see Godwin, still singing out a line, with his huge hands balled into fists. David is hanging by one hand from the top of the stump, scant inches between his fingers and the heavy end of the mast. His feet scrabble for purchase—his other hand reaches wildly—and then he steadies, pulls himself up, and guides the mast the rest of the way down.

Godwin’s singing breaks off, and James sees him wipe his brow, but he’s already striding away and calling out further orders to the men. David is tying off the rope that binds the two parts of the mast, making his way around, tightening the knots and tugging on them to check. At a shout from Godwin he looks around, and half-climbs, half-slides down the mast to land back on the deck like a cat. Two others scurry up in his place with wide wooden pins and a mallet.

As they begin hammering at the mortise holes, fastening the mast more securely, James watches David. He walks quickly away from the mast, out of the way of the men weaving around it with rope and chain. He stands for a moment on his own, looking about, not appearing harrowed by his near miss, but rather searching—

“If there are no more delays,” a voice says beside James, “then we ought to be able to rig up the mizzen yards by nightfall and weigh anchor tomorrow.”

James looks around and sees Will, his arms crossed and his eyes on the men hammering in the pins. “Do you expect any more delays?” he asks.

“No,” Will admits, “but David never falls, either.”

“You saw that?”

Will nods. “It’s a risky task, but he is the only one small enough to get out of the way quickly, if it should come to that. He climbs up to repair rigging while we are underway, as well.”

James notes the hint of warmth in Will’s otherwise even voice. “You’re fond of him.”

“He does good work,” Will replies, lifting his chin as he meets James’s eyes. “Come along. I want to talk to you.”

“What?” James is shocked by the forwardness of it, such a departure from the brusque orders and indirect hints of the past week.

Will does not explain, but simply turns and goes into his cabin. James follows and sits at the table. “I have decided,” Will says when he has done so, standing with a hand tapping the table, “to take your advice.”

He says no more for several moments. “My advice?” James prompts.

As if coming out of a reverie, Will blinks. “Yes. About where to go next. We needn’t head directly for world’s end, not until we know more—”

“Wait,” James interrupts, “I haven’t given you any advice. I’ve not suggested anything at all.” He had thought, in fact, that had he tried to tell Will his thoughts on their course of action, Will might actually have found a way to kill him again. Or so it had seemed to him at the time. Now, however, with Will gazing intently at him, he wonders.

“But I know you,” Will says. “You want to take another route, if such a way exists, even if you will not say it.” He waits, and James cannot deny it. “You think it would be unwise to press the crew to something they fear. You worry that they will desert.”

James sighs. “It seems likely to me,” he admits.

Will’s eyes spark. “I do not think they would—not enough of them to cause a problem, at any rate—but I think you are right to be cautious. And with regard to Calypso as well.”

“You do?” James asked, surprised once more, and worse than before. “I thought you were her loyal servant.” Too bitter, he thinks at himself.

But Will does not seem to resent it, or even to notice. “I trust her more than I trust the crew, because she at least would not sell me to anyone. But she is powerful and—and she does not think the way you and I do.” James snorts; that is putting it mildly. “I am not sure that we have enough information to follow her advice so blindly.”

James pauses, his mouth half-open, caught between several things he wants to say. The one that wins out is: “She did not even give you any advice, she wrecked this ship!”

“She could have drowned us if she had wanted,” Will points out, as he did the last time James raised this objection.

“Simply because she could have done much worse does not mean she bears you no ill will,” James argues. Then, as Will opens his mouth again, he rushes, “Never mind that. Where do you intend to get more information? And—what are you looking to find?”

Will pauses with the air of someone playing a trump card. “Elizabeth,” he says simply.

James waits, but that appears to be the entire statement. “She is beyond the world’s end,” he says, “is she not?”

Still Will has not sat down; now he begins to pace the cabin in the weak midday light. “I think she may not be,” he says. “If she were—if her soul were to—to linger, then there are places where we might find her. Places with meaning, to which she might have returned.”

James watches him, the long strides, the agitated splay of his fingers. There is something in the motion that he does not quite know how to parse. “You think she is waiting on an island somewhere?” he asks weakly.

“Not simply an island. Somewhere important.”

James stares. “Such as where?”

—

It is the worst sort of bad dream, sitting in this small boat in the faint moonlight and rowing away from a ship, looking toward a jagged outcropping of rock that James had hoped never to see again. Except it is not even a dream: James wishes it were. He looks over at Will, in the other boat and slightly ahead of his, but his face is shrouded in shadow. The mist is thinner here, so he can at least see beyond the halo of his own lantern, but details are still hazy.

Last time—when he was alive—it had been clear and bright, the moon an unwelcome eye staring down on what had been meant to be an ambush. What had he felt, James wonders, then? So much else has happened—the ambition that drove him at the time feels foreign now. The constancy of duty had been a dagger at his back, though he cannot pretend he hadn’t felt a certain pride in it. From what he remembers of those days, James imagines he felt eager despite the bright moonlight, hungry for a fight perhaps, or for what the fight would mean. A victory against piracy and against Jack Sparrow, damn him; a rung in his slowing climb through the ranks; a sign that perhaps he had not lost both of the best things in his life in one day.

He had known that Will was there. Joining forces with a pirate, with Sparrow of all people. The injustice of it had burned like salt in a wound, and beneath the betrayal, the festering guilt that never left him. He had tried not to spare a thought for Will on that night, out of both principle and practicality, yet as usual he had been unsuccessful, had wondered not just whether Will was pleased with his actions but whether he wanted the fight as well—whether he might also be thinking of James. Even then, he had been selfish.

But what, James wonders now, _had_ Will been thinking of? Surely it was not James, in truth. It must have been Elizabeth. Or the danger they were all in. Or the treasure, that cursed Aztec gold which James still has a difficult time believing actually existed in spite of everything. Had he known of Sparrow’s plans, the double-cross or the triple-cross? Had he wanted, even secretly, to warn—

“You were with the Crown,” Simmons growls, “weren’t you?”

James looks around, both irritated and grateful to be pulled out of his own thoughts. “Pardon?”

Simmons nods at him: the tattered uniform, James supposes, glowing more eerily than ever in the refracted moonlight from the water. “Those’re Admirals’ colors. You served?”

Quite apart from not liking the look in Simmons’s eye, James is not sure how to give an honest answer. “I served for a time,” he says cautiously. He matches Simmons’s tone, so low that the words do not carry to the other boat. “Duty never suited me as well as I pretended.”

A sneer lifts the corner of Simmons’s mouth. “They string you up for it?”

James shakes his head. _Part of the crew, part of the ship,_ Bootstrap repeats in his mind. “No, I—” But to say that he died saving lives feel like more heroism than he has a right to; at the end of the day, he was only putting right one very small part of the wrong he had done.

Into his silence, Simmons snorts. “Topped yourself, then?” He doesn’t say it gleefully, only curiously.

“No,” James says, so quickly that he wonders if it is entirely true after all. “It was—a misunderstanding.” That is perhaps farther from the truth than anything else he might have said. He sighs. “They did string me up, in a manner of speaking. Ran me through, rather.”

“And you knew the captain,” Simmons prompts. It isn’t a question.

James cannot resist glancing over at the other boat, where Will rows and another crew member—Abbot, James recalls—holds the lantern. “What gives you that idea?” Which is of course practically an admission in and of itself.

A look flickers over Simmons’s face which James cannot read. “What’s he planning?” Simmons asks.

As much as he hates the truth, James would rather not fabricate something that might be worse. “I don’t know,” he admits. He needn’t tell Simmons what he guesses.

“He talks to you all the time,” Simmons presses. “What’s he saying, if he’s not telling you—?”

“How long have you been on this crew?” James interrupts.

It must be a rare occurrence, someone not listening when Simmons speaks. James notes the moment of startled silence. “Three years,” Simmons says, sounding almost as shocked as James is that he actually answered. “Joined up out of Tortuga.” _Of course,_ James thinks, and is not surprised when Simmons repeats his question. It’s only fair. “Now, what’s he saying, then?”

James pauses again before he answers. “We simply—talk,” he says. “Of the past. We knew each other, as you said.” He thinks it is a safe admission, this partial truth, though he would rather be telling it to anyone but Simmons. Never mind that when they speak of the past it feels as if James is dying over again, every word an agony. “I don’t ask after his plans,” he adds.

It is an outright lie, and from the look on Simmons’s face, it is also an obvious one. “That so?”

A dull thunk makes James look around: the other boat has reached the entrance to the tunnels, and Abbot is using an oar to steer the boat away from the rocky wall. They are far enough ahead that James loses sight of their lantern within moments, only for it to wink back into view when he and Simmons near the tunnel as well. They both stay silent as they draw closer to the other boat. The craggy face of the island looks as impenetrable as James remembers, gazing up as they row beneath it, wreathed in shadowed mist. In truth, he does not want to enter the caves—he doubts it will yield anything, and yet he also fears that it might.

Neither Will nor Abbot speaks, either: the whispering rush of the sea and their quiet, splashing oarstrokes fill the air and echo to a cacophony. The two lanterns gleam on the damp walls but do little to diminish the darkness, which presses in from all sides as they enter the tunnel. James catches sight of his own reflection in the water, which is otherwise black as obsidian—the pale blue of his form is like a fish flashing in the depths, frighteningly strange and unnatural. He wonders what Elizabeth will look like if they find her here. Will she glow as he does? Will they be able to gaze through her to the rock and water and flickering lantern light?

To James’s surprise, the mist is entirely absent in the caves. The first boat scrapes against the rock and Will and Abbot clamber out. James and Simmons do the same and they tie the boats off, working in silence. He can see Abbot sending anxious glances towards Will, who does not seem to notice. “Simmons, you take that tunnel,” Will says when he is satisfied with the knots, nodding to one dark opening in the rock. “Abbot, that one. Give a shout if you find anything.”

“And I’m to be your lantern, I suppose,” James says, amused in spite of himself as the other lights go bobbing with their bearers away into the tunnels.

“Not for long.” Will beckons with a jerk of his head and steps carefully on the slippery stone towards a third tunnel, the largest. “It ought to be lighter up here.”

Following, James thinks he might indeed see light up ahead—and then he blinks in the sudden brightness of a shaft of moonlight that breaks throught the clouds and passes through a hole in the ceiling. It sprinkles the cave with white light, and James suddenly sees—the great gaping space, bare rock and silent sea, ringed on all sides by the dark crags. He looks around to see Will frowning at the brightest patch of moonlight, a shelf of rock near the center of the grotto, no different from the others as far as James can see. “Do you see something?” he asks doubtfully.

Will shakes his head. “The chest stood there,” he says after a moment. “With all the gold.”

“I thought—” James pauses, surprised, when Will turns to look at him. “I heard that this place had been swallowed by the sea,” James confesses. “Evidently, I heard wrong.”

“You heard right,” Will says. “Or I should say—half-right. The man who told me of it said there were hundred-foot waves. He barely got out with his life. But all that was swallowed was the treasure.” He gestures towards the empty shelf. “The cursed gold is at the bottom of the sea with all the shipwrecks. But the island is still here.”

“Clearly,” James replies, unsettled by the tone of Will’s voice. “What are Abbot and Simmons supposed to find?”

“I hid up there with Jack,” Will says, not listening. He points at a dark place high above the water, and though the shadows are deep, James can make out the faint outline of a ledge. “Watching. Waiting. Some of the longest minutes of my life.”

James stays silent. He is beginning to think that there is another purpose to visiting this place, beyond simply finding Elizabeth—something more that Will is searching for, from what James can tell by the look on his face. Sad and far-off, as if he is not only thinking of the past but reliving it. Though James supposes that for Will, finding Elizabeth and retracing the steps of his life might be one and the same.

“Did she tell you of it?” Will asks. “When you rescued her from that island?”

“Some of it,” James answers. “Only once we were on our way back here to save you. She did not—I do not think she wanted me to know.”

“Perhaps not.” There is a hint of amusement in Will’s voice now. “She told _me_ that you only agreed to save me once she said she would marry you.”

James bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself quiet for a moment, though he is not sure what he would have said. “I am not proud of it,” he says at last, looking at his smeared reflection in the water. Not of pain he caused Elizabeth, nor of the jealous, painful thing he had felt for Will then—half hatred, half grief.

Will sighs. James thinks, at first, that it is a response to his words—but then Will says, “She is not here.” With something soft and frightening in his voice, so quiet it might be a part of the sea as it hisses through the stone.

“Perhaps Abbot or Simmons will find her,” James says, because though he does not believe it, he cannot bear the look on Will’s face.

“She would be here, if she were anywhere on this island,” Will insists. He does not sound surprised, or even disappointed—no, he sounds beyond caring, which is worse. In the silence, he is staring absently up towards the rock ledge—but then his gaze sharpens, his brow furrows. James follows his eyes and sees, with a lurch of horror in his stomach, that the fathomless shadows there are more than mere darkness. Tendrils of mist, black and thick.

“Will, get away from it,” James says as the mist uncoils slowly down the wall of the grotto towards the water: it puts him in mind of dense smoke spilling over the edge of a pot, and it fills him with dread. Will is yards from him, much closer to the mist, and unmoving. “Will!”

Still Will stays where he is. James feels frozen, caught between running away and moving closer to Will—though he knows from his previous attempts that he cannot touch Will, much less haul him over rough, wet stone. The mist creeps closer, only feet away from Will now. James grits his teeth and takes one futile step towards him, just as Will half-turns, looking at James—and then the mist swallows him.

James wonders fleetingly if this is what it looked like when he was in the mist himself: such complete engulfment that Will’s form vanishes in less than a heartbeat. But James can hear him—a single low cry out of the darkness, then a splash as of something large and heavy falling into water. The sound cuts like a knife, and yet James knows that it would be pointless to go after him. They cannot touch, and it would render James useless with terror, as it did before. He turns and runs, away from the mist, skirting the edges of the grotto but loathe to actually leave the cave. The mist is still moving, though there is no wind. It seems to be a larger cloud than the previous one, for James stares as hard as he can, yet its depth is such that he can make out nothing, and still there is no more sound from within. “Will, can you hear me?” James calls. The echo makes him remember—“Simmons! Abbot! To me!” Though there is little enough any of them can do.

And then, ever so slowly, the mist moves away. Towards the other edge of the grotto, seeping down another tunnel. As it moves, James stares, searching—and then he sees Will, floating in the shallow water, moving weakly. His heart in his throat, James races to him. Splashes halfway into the water, only to remember once again that he is powerless to help Will up. “It’s gone,” he says, half-shouting in desperation, watching the water lap at Will’s lips. “Can you hear me? Will!”

Will’s eyelids flutter. His limp hands extend. Then he seems to wake, finally, his eyes opening. After a moment of floundering, he finds his footing in the shallow pool and claws his way back up onto the rock.

James sits beside him while he coughs, watching the last of the black mist disappear into the tunnel. “Are you all right?” he asks when Will’s gasping is no longer so raw.

Will pushes the wet hair out of his eyes. “I’ll live,” he says weakly. “At any rate, I cannot die.”

“That’s not what I asked,” James starts, but stops at the sight of Will’s hand trembling against the stone. “I know what that mist is like,” he says. “I meant to tell you, but then I—became distracted. So much else has happened. But it was my first night aboard the _Dutchman_ with you.” He cannot tell if Will is listening or if he has stilled out of mere exhaustion; nevertheless, he keeps talking, if only to keep himself from shouting at Will. “There was nowhere to go; I couldn’t escape it. And when I was inside the mist, it seemed to me that I was no longer a ghost. I was alive again.” He swallows. “And then I felt myself die.”

“I know,” Will says, his voice low.

“It was—” James breaks off in shock. “You know?”

Will pushes himself up to sit straighter, looking as if every motion costs him dearly. “Some of the men have encountered that sort of mist before. Four times, by my count.”

“And?” James demands. “What happens to them?”

“Two of them died,” Will says. “The other two fell ill. They never spoke of what had happened. When they recovered, they went ashore as soon as we made port and never came back.”

“They _died?”_ James repeats, aghast. “From some mist?”

Will nods. “Tremayne and Evans. They were good sailors—strong men. But the clouds in which they were trapped were very large, and there was nowhere for them to go.” His face twists. “When the mist was gone, they looked as if they’d been dead for weeks, all withered and sunken.”

James shudders. “Why in hell’s name did you not move out of the way?” he presses. “If you saw such things?”

“I was curious,” Will says softly. “I suspected it would not kill me. And I was right.”

“That’s beside the point,” James insists, horrified. “Think if you had been wrong.” And then, meeting Will’s eyes, he understands what should have been obvious—that Will has thought of that as well, and that he simply does not care. “What happened to you?” he asks in lieu of pursuing that line any further. “In the mist. What did you see?”

Will opens his mouth as if to respond, but stays silent for another moment longer. He pulls off his boots and dumps the water out of them, shivering faintly in his soaked clothes. “Did she tell you of the medallion, before?” he asks at last.

It takes James a moment to realize that Will is referring to what he said earlier—about the little Elizabeth had explained to him when they had been racing back to Isla de Muerta. He considers resisting—repeating his question, demanding an answer to what Will saw in the mist. But Will is looking at him without anger or that cold, unknowable focus, and James is loathe to waste it. “The gold piece? She mentioned it,” he says hesitantly. “She said the pirates had taken her because they thought it belonged to her, but she never said more than that.”

“It was mine,” Will says. James, meeting his dark eyes, finds he is not surprised. “My father’s.”

James is not sure why Will is telling him this—nor why he has chosen this moment. “Your father’s,” he repeats. “Bootstrap.”

“You met him while you worked for Beckett?” Will guesses.

That is, James supposes, one way to put it. “I did.” He suppresses a shudder at the memory of the blade between his ribs, Bootstrap’s voice echoing like a chorus in his mind. “And he gave it to you? As a boy?”

Will nods. “It was clever, I realized later. To pass the gold along and make the curse binding for his crew. Only—I wonder if he knew that he gave a different curse to me.” He adds thoughtfully, “And to Elizabeth. And you, after a fashion.”

James blinks in surprise. “How have I been cursed?” he asks.

“You mean apart from returning from the dead, surely,” Will says dryly. He pushes himself laboriously to his feet, and James follows suit. “You were cursed the moment you thought to track the _Pearl._ And you tracked the _Pearl_ because you loved Elizabeth.”

 _And I loved Elizabeth in part because of you,_ James thinks but does not say. Perhaps he had been cursed after all—before the _Pearl,_ ever since he began to love Will, since he kissed him and knew it could not last. Cursed to follow him or betray him, and doomed in the end by both.

Will takes no notice of James’s frown. “So it makes sense in the end, does it not? That we are both here, today.” Looking to James again, Will catches the confusion on his face and explains. “You were always the noble one, and I was always a pirate. Even when I was running from it.”

James pauses. He mislikes the tone of that _noble_ —not admiring, but rather disdainful. Full of the truth of how far James has fallen. James passes over that, not wishing to lay himself entirely bare, and asks, “You call it—running, what you did all those years?”

“What would you call it?” Will asks. Standing on the uneven rocks, he is half a head higher than James.

James considers. Those years were—well, he thinks, Will was barely more than a boy, and he himself could hardly have been called a man; was it truly running from anything, given how lost they both were? After all, that was their time together, brief but sunlit: amusing, how he thinks of it as bright, though they rarely met during the day. “I would prefer to call it living,” he says mildly.

Will regards him with one raised eyebrow. “Would you.” But before James can reply, Will has turned away. “Abbot!” he calls. “Simmons! Where have you got to?”

The sudden change takes James by surprise, and he follows without thinking. “What if,” he says as they go, “the mist—?”

“I am sure they’re all right,” Will says. He speaks so firmly that it puts James in mind of how he regarded Calypso, as if nothing in the world could convince him otherwise, let alone prove him wrong. “The mist cannot move through solid stone, and they both know to be wary of it.”

“As they ought to be,” James cannot resist saying. He watches Will walking ahead of him, but he does not stop or look back, or give any other sign that he has heard.

Footsteps echo from ahead of them before long, and they slow—and then Abbot appears around a bend in the tunnel. A look of relief appears on his face in the light of the lantern he carries. “I heard shouting,” he says. “Was that you? I couldn’t make out the words.”

“Aye,” Will and James say in unison.

Abbot looks between them, and then his eyes settle on Will. “Did you fall in the water, Captain?”

“The stone was rather slippery,” Will replies, with—James is astounded to see it—a faint smile. “Did you find anything?”

Abbot shakes his head. “No sign of anyone. I believe we are the only living souls in these caves.” He pauses. “Well, and Simmons.” At Will’s glance, he says, “He is waiting where we left the boats. His tunnel was a dead end and he said he would watch the boats until you returned.”

From what James can see of Will’s face, his smile has turned grim. He strides off down the tunnel again with James and Abbot following close behind. The tunnel bends again, and James recognizes where they are—the boats are ahead, and Simmons must be as well. Sure enough, there is a scraping against stone, and then Simmons comes into view brushing dirt from his trousers. “Captain,” he says, nodding, sparing barely half a glance for James and Abbot.

“Well?” says Will by way of reply.

A moment passes before Simmons speaks. “I couldn’t find anything, Captain.”

“So you thought you’d watch the boats.”

If Simmons is at all concerned by the tone of Will’s voice, light and playful like a snake that sways before it strikes, he hides it well. “I’ve heard stories. Thought it might be best if someone kept a lookout.”

Will nods once. “Afraid of ghosts, are you?”

Simmons’s eyes flick plainly to James and away. “I did find one thing. Not a ghost.” He produces something from inside his coat, a small object that glints in the lantern light.

Taking it from him, Will pauses and inspects it, turning it over in his fingers. Then he chuckles and looks up. “You’ll not want to go carrying this around, I’ll warrant, if you truly have heard the stories.” He half-turns toward James and tosses the object at him.

James catches it as Will says, “We ought to be off. There’s nothing for us here.” He can feel its weight and hard, cold edges in his closed fist. When all four of them are in the boats and rowing away, he looks at it: a round coin engraved with a skull and strange symbols which he cannot make out. The dim light makes its smile seem wider, its empty eye sockets deeper. A chill runs through him as he recognizes what it must be—one of the pieces of gold, said to be cursed. Caught in the tunnels instead of being swept out to sea, or perhaps dredged from its deep resting place by a current. In life James would have tossed it to the waves without a second thought; his men would have taken it for bad luck. Yet he pockets the coin as if it were a talisman, thinking that one more curse will hardly make much difference. If he is already burdened with life beyond death, he may as well keep the first thing Will has given him in eighty-five years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr](http://blanketed-in-stars.tumblr.com)! Comments are love <3


	5. Heave In Sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heave in sight: to appear at a distance.

The hammocks are still stowed, though the men have finished eating—some are sitting together on barrels, playing a game of dice, others are coiling rope or cleaning the rust from pulleys. It is a scene James knows well. How often has he sat among them, or men like them, resting after a day of sweating in the sun or snatching a last moment of peace before spending the night on watch? The low talk and laughter around him are familiar sounds, in harmony with the creaking of timbers and the distant heavy rumble of the deep. The lingering sense of strangeness, however, comes from the fact that none of the men so much as glances as him when he steps down from the half-deck—no turning heads or halted conversations. As if he were one of them—or as if he weren’t there at all.

James passes his gaze over the men in the light of the lantern, but he can tell that David is not among them. Nor is Godwin, the only man who James would dare to trouble by asking: he may not give the crew cause for alarm any longer, but James has not deluded himself into thinking that they enjoy his company. So he makes his way through the room quietly, and no one speaks to him or otherwise acknowledges his presence, and he reaches the other end of the room without trouble.

When he pushes open the door to the galley, it is to find a much quieter scene: the cook is scouring a pot with sand and saltwater, and Fascine is lying on the table. Seated on the bench beside her is Moreno, frowning at a set of dirty playing cards laid out before him. A string of fresh-caught fish lies smoking over the smoldering coals from the meal. The cook does not turn at the sound of the door, but Moreno does, looking up so that the shadow of his dark hair makes his eyes appear black. “Supper is over,” he says.

Is it a joke? James thinks it must be—he has never eaten with the crew before, and they all know that he needs no food at all, in any case. Yet from what he knows of Moreno—practically nothing, only his overheard conversation with Will and what James has noticed over three weeks’ time—he rarely jests. The expression on his face is the same he had when gazing at his cards, but it does not seem particularly amused, either. “I don’t want any food,” James replies. Moreno continues to watch him impassively. Fascine, at his elbow, flicks her tail as if she is waiting as well, her eyes fixed intently on James. “Do you know where I might find David?” James asks. He might as well take the risk with a smaller audience, he figures, than go poking around the ship for any longer, and he has seen David and Moreno speaking together on more than one occasion.

“What do you want with him?” Moreno asks, dropping his gaze and shuffling the cards back together, spitting out the _you_ as if James might be tainted. Perhaps Moreno believes that he is.

“I need to ask him some questions,” James replies.

“What about?”

James bites back his impatience, well-aware that he is not a ranking officer on this ship, though it is vexing. And he supposes that being an officer would hardly help him on a pirate ship. “Something he said to me,” James says. He manages to keep his tone polite, but he refuses to give Moreno the information he’s looking for.

He notes with some satisfaction that Moreno’s eyes narrow. “I’ll take you to him,” he says.

“That’s not necessary.” James doesn’t fancy following such a sullen, suspicious man about the ship. “If you would simply tell me—”

“I’ll take you to him,” Moreno repeats in a tone that brooks no argument. He stows his cards in his jacket with one hand and gives Fascine a pat with the other. “Watch her around those fish,” he says to the cook as he leaves. “She’s had more than enough already.” The man gives a single chuckle in reply.

“Is she your cat?” James asks as the door swings shut.

Moreno shakes his head, leading the way back through the long, low cabin while the men talk around them. “Some say she is the captain’s, but she belongs to no one. Or to some man who was here before the rest of us joined the crew, perhaps.” It’s the most words James has heard him speak at one time since his eavesdropping, and he notices the accent again—Spanish, if he had to guess.

They climb the stairs back up to the half-deck, out into the cool night air, made cooler by the ever-present mist. Just as James thinks it, Moreno says, “I do not like this mist. You cannot see the stars.” James looks around in surprise. From Moreno’s expression, he seems to have surprised himself as well, but he quickly arranges his face into a frown again. “David is this way,” he says brusquely, and walks away at a quicker pace than before. James follows, catching up as they round the quarter deck, heading towards the balcony. Of course—the one place abovedeck that James hasn’t already looked. “David?” Moreno calls loudly. “Are you there? The ghost wants to talk to you.”

“Here,” comes the reply, while James considers whether or not to go to the trouble of pointing out the fact that he has a name. He decides against it as they emerge onto the balcony and find David perched precariously on the railing of the balcony. He does not get down when they approach, but spins around so that his back is to the open air, swinging his legs. “What is it?” he asks.

“He wants to talk to you,” Moreno repeats.

“Do you?” David’s voice is light, but he watches James with disconcerting focus.

“He wouldn’t say why.” Moreno, on the other hand, sounds begrudging and a bit apologetic.

David looks to him. “Then I guess I’d better talk to him and find out, hadn’t I?”

He speaks as if the whole thing is a farce, with a small smile on his face. James finds it almost funny himself, David’s cheer beside Moreno’s sourness. But Moreno stays where he is despite the clear dismissal. James sees, looking between the two, that Moreno is not actually looking at David. Rather, he is gazing at a point half a foot to the left of him, his jaw set and his golden brow furrowed. For only a moment, and then he stalks off. David turns back to James, no longer smiling.

If James had not been somewhat skilled at knowing a lie when he sees one, he would not have been able to tell so many himself. And there is something chill in the air now, apart from the damp mist. James thinks he recognizes it. He does not know exactly what is being hidden—but there is something. David speaks, however, before he can give it any further thought. “What did you want to say?”

“I wanted to ask you some questions,” James clarifies. “About my first night on this ship. What you said, and—what happened.” He sees by David’s expression that he remembers. “That black mist, you knew what it was.”

David nods.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” James demands.

“There wasn’t much time,” David replies. Even in the darkness of the night, his eyes are lighter than Moreno’s, but they, too, are unreadable. “I had to get below. And I told you then—I didn’t think it would hurt you.”

“You were wrong,” James says. He watches David for a reaction, but gets nothing more than a slight tightening around his mouth. “Did you know the men who encountered it before? The two who died, or the ones who left?”

David looks away, over his shoulder and down to the black water and silvery mist below. “Tremayne was a good man,” he says. James remembers that name: one of the dead. “He cared for his mother and sister, back in England. He always meant to go back to them.”

James hesitates. “What about the two who lived?” he asks, trying to soften his voice despite his desperate need to understand.

“I knew one of them, as well,” David acknowledges. “Luis. Moreno’s brother.” There is bitterness behind the words—James cannot tell whether it is grief or something else. “He joined the crew with Moreno, well before I did. And I would not have joined at all, if not for—” He cuts himself off. “He went back to Spain some months ago,” he finishes quietly.

“What happened to him? In the mist?”

David shrugs. “He never spoke of it. Not to the captain, nor Moreno, nor anyone else. But I tell you, he never slept another night through on board the ship.”

If what Luis saw was anything close to what James experienced, then James can well believe it. “Does Moreno have any guesses as to what he saw?”

It had been an innocent question. But David’s head whips back around. “Don’t speak of Luis to him,” he says. Not quite angry—but urgent, certainly. “Don’t hurt him like that.”

“I won’t hurt him,” James assures him, taken aback.

Far from seeming heartened, David shakes his head. “Don’t hurt anyone like that,” he presses still more forcefully.

“I won’t,” James promises, but he hardly hears his own words. He is thinking of several things at once. Of the way Moreno would not look David in the eye, of the pain in David’s voice now, of the insistence, near pleading, on his face. How many times did he lie like that himself, James wonders, desperate to protect and desperate, above all, not to be noticed doing so? How many times did he ask himself: how far is too far, how much is too much? Always, the caution, even among strangers. And for David, it seems, even among the dead. He remembers Moreno’s shout when David slipped on the mast. His heart breaks against his ribs like a wave against the shore.

“Good,” David says, oblivious to James’s thoughts and apparently seeing no trace of them on his face. He twists halfway around again with foot up on the balcony railing, his knee drawn close to his chest, the other still dangling. As if he doesn’t care about the height and the wind, or even as if he doesn’t notice the danger at all. “I’m sorry about the mist,” he says at last. His voice is calm again, but carefully so.

“Well, I survived,” James relents. But he cannot afford to forget why he is here. “I had other questions, as well. When we first spoke, you also said the captain was—upset, when I came aboard. What did you mean by that?”

“Oh.” Though David is facing away, James can clearly hear that he is surprised. “I’d’ve thought you’d know best. He came down to talk to the crew—told us we weren’t to harm you or cause you trouble. But the way he said it, we—we weren’t sure, any of us, whether he wasn’t giving those orders because he was afraid of you.”

James snorts. “Afraid of me?”

David turns back around to face James, his hands on his thighs. “He looked like a man on deck during a storm, watching a wave come up over the side,” he says. “That’s what I thought when I saw him. Only thing missing was the thunder.” He must see that James does not believe him. “He tried to hide it, to be sure. But I know what fear looks like. His hands were shaking like leaves.”

Staring at him, James tries to imagine it, and comes up short. He does not know if he has seen Will afraid before. Concerned, yes, and worried, and of course he has seen him angry. But the thought that he might have been afraid that night—surely not. “You don’t know him,” he says. “He would not be afraid of me.”

“He was,” David insists.

James does not argue—it seems more trouble than it’s worth—but he remains unconvinced. If Will feels anything for him, it must be scorn, not fear. He has made that clear enough.

Into James’s silence, David asks, “How do you know the captain, then?” He speaks the question like a challenge, but James can hear honest curiosity in the words, different from the way Simmons had asked.

Perhaps it is this that makes him consider answering honestly, in addition to his earlier revelation. He suspects that in David he would find the most understanding audience apart from Will himself. But there is too much pain to lay it bare now, too much that would require James to start over again and again in the telling; aside from that, it is sure to be entirely more than David wants to know. “We were friends,” James says, feeling that the phrase is both paltry and a lie.

David frowns. “You _were_ friends. When you were—” He gestures vaguely. “Alive?”

James nods. “A long time ago. Good friends.” He stops himself, starts again. “By the time I died, however, we were—estranged.” The sting of guilt, familiar as salt in an old wound.

“And now?” David asks, his eyes glinting shrewdly in the dark.

“I cannot tell,” James says. As honest an answer as any, given Will’s strange moods and David’s talk of fear. They are not friends, but beyond that—?

David lets it lie. “Where are we going?” he asks instead, leaning forward slightly. “Has he told you anything?”

“We are traveling to the edge of the world.”

“I know,” David says impatiently. “The captain said so, and so did Godwin. But I made that journey when I first joined the crew—we have all traveled there at least once. And we are sailing in the wrong direction. So: where are we going?”

Hearing the sudden sharpness of David’s voice, James cannot help remembering what he told Will in his cabin—that the crew would not like their errand, that they would resist being dragged along in the dark. The sense of foreboding, never far from James’s mind, surfaces and fills him with unease. “We _are_ going to world’s end,” James repeats. “I know that is what he intends to do.” It is the truth, as far as James is aware. He need not tell David that he does not know where they are headed at this moment—that Will does not tell him precisely what route they will take, nor where he plans to stop on the way.

From the look David gives him, however, it seems that he guesses as much. “The crew will go with him,” he tells James, “or most of us will. Some would simply rather do anything than go home, but there are other reasons as well. Debts that must be paid.”

James raises one eyebrow. “Loyalty?”

“You ought to stick with the Navy if you want such allegiance as that,” David says, nodding to James’s ragged, glowing uniform. “We are loyal to one another, not the captain. Or so most of the men will tell you.”

“And what are you telling me?” James asks, somewhat impatient now himself. He can tell that David is trying to make a point, but he cannot decipher it.

David shakes his head, a barely-visible movement now that the night has completely fallen. “I hope that you will tell the captain. Remind him of his debt to us.”

“I am not his friend,” James says wearily. “I tell you, he is not afraid of me.”

“Are you afraid of him?” David demands.

“No,” James replies, and he says it so thoughtlessly that he only realizes after the word has left his mouth that it is true. It has been difficult to know, he supposes, between one day and the next, what he feels for Will—but whatever it is, the desperate care and the agony and sadness, no part of it is fear. But he can explain none of it to David. “I will try to speak to him,” he allows. “But I cannot promise anything will come of it. A long time has passed since I lived, and longer since he paid any mind to me.”

David nods, seeming satisfied. He stays where he is on the rail, hands loosely at his sides, and gazes not at James but at the night, pressing in around the ship. “How long has it been?” he asks.

James searches his words and face as best he can in the darkness, but he finds nothing beyond curiosity. “Eighty years,” he answers honestly.

He might have expected David to blanch, to make some superstitious gesture of protection as many sailors do. But there is only a slight widening of the eyes. “The captain does not look it,” he says at last, his voice quieter.

“No,” James agrees.

“Has he been captain all that time?” When James nods, David mirrors it. “What a terrible fate.”

James blinks. He had not imagined that David would react thus—he might have thought he would be scornful, angrier still about Will’s choices and secrecy. But the tone in David’s voice is one of pity, such as James himself has felt on more than one occasion. It is startling, coming from this near-stranger on the heels of such a delicate conversation, and James finds himself moved. “Indeed. I would not wish it on anyone.”

David tilts his head to one side: a slight movement against the shadowy mist behind him. “How did you die?” Again, he asks it differently from Simmons, though he is more direct. Possibly he thinks it matters little, because James said it happened long ago. He cannot know how James works to keep his breath even, to keep from reaching for a weapon he does not have.

“Sword through the heart,” James answers instead, honest again, if a little tersely. “Right there,” he adds after a moment, and points.

David looks to the spot: barely a yard away, the rail and deck unmarked. “There? On this ship?” James nods. It’s clear from David’s voice that he did not mean for such an earnest answer, making James suddenly glad that he held his tongue earlier. “Forgive me,” he says in a low voice.

Caught off guard, James smiles. “It’s all right,” he says. It would be a lie if anyone else had asked. “In some ways, I believe I could hardly have asked for a better death.”

Though James intends to put him at ease, his words seem to have the opposite effect. It is too dark to much of David’s face, but he shifts on the rail as if uncertain of his perch, and when he speaks, his voice is even quieter than before. “Do you know anything about the mist?” he asks. “Not the black kind—all the rest of it. Is it true? Are they souls returned from beyond the grave?”

James hesitates. It feels nearly as fraught as that moment in Will’s cabin, though a different question now hangs in the air. He is suddenly conscious of the mist all about them—hidden in the night, but there nonetheless, a silent shroud. “If they are souls, they are different from me,” he says at last, which is no answer at all. “What do you know about them?” he asks in return.

There is a small noise as David jumps down from the rail. “Nothing,” he says simply. “Only that all the others are afraid of them.”

“But not you?”

David does not sound offended at the question. “There are worse things.”

James remembers his earlier words: _I know what fear looks like._ He does not doubt it. As he follows David back around the side of the ship towards the half-deck, he finds himself wishing they could speak of something else—he does not want to part on such a somber note. “Do you have the next watch?” he asks as lightly as he is able.

“No. I must help the cook with the washing-up.”

James cannot tell by David’s voice whether he is joking or not. “Is that one of your regular duties?” He is used to such tasks being the lot of cabin boys, not grown men.

“Regular enough,” David says, seeming untroubled.

“This is how they repay you for risking your life with the mast?”

Now there is a clear smile behind David’s words. “It is only right that I help with repairs however I can—and I am the only one who can climb so high and so lightly. I would rather do that than haul the ropes like the rest of the men.” He slows his steps as they reach the half-deck. “And as for helping the cook, I consider it quite fair, since I do not want to eat out of a dirty bowl.”

James laughs, too, in spite of himself. “At least someone on this ship is happy with his lot.”

David chuckles, but says quietly, “I do not imagine you were pleased with yours?”

“No,” James admits.

Pulling up the door to the lower deck, David pauses. “And now?”

It does not feel like the same question he asked earlier, though the words are the same. This is quieter, and more earnest. “Now—I do not know,” he admits. It is honest, despite the snort of disbelief as David descends belowdeck. James doubts he will ever explain it to him, but it is the truth—he is neither dead nor alive, though he tends further to one side than the other; he is neither happy nor unhappy, though the ache in his chest persists.

—

On the day that marks an entire month since James was pulled from the waves, he notices an island in the far distance. The mist is clearer today, yet even so he stands at the port rail for several minutes before he is sure of what he is seeing. A dim shape looming dark in the distance, a shadow against the rest of the gray world. Most of the men on deck are working, but a few have gathered farther along the rail and are squinting in the same direction. One of them is speaking to the others in a low voice, too quiet for James to catch the words.

The island is still too far away to make out any details, but James stays where he is, wondering what it could be. Most likely it is their destination—they have been sailing through otherwise empty waters—but he does not like the look of it. Of course, he did not like the look of the other island either, the one where they were anchored during the repairs. It must be the mist, which cloaks everything it touches and muffles every sound. It makes even the fairest things seem menacing. Yet even knowing this, James cannot shake a sense of foreboding.

It increases when he turns at the sound of footsteps to see one of the men approaching. “The captain wants to talk to you,” the man says. “In his cabin.” There is no mistaking the look of distaste on his face as he speaks, but this time James is fairly certain it is not because of him.

“Thank you,” he says, and goes to see Will, while the man joins the others clustered along the rail, still gazing at the island. When James enters Will’s cabin, it is to find him facing away, leaning over the organ, peering out of one of the small windows. He waits a moment for Will to turn, but he does not. “That man you sent to fetch me,” James says at last, “I do not think he enjoys being treated as a common courier.”

“Whether he does or not,” Will says, still looking out the window, “he joined this ship, and I am its captain.”

He does not say it boastfully, or even stubbornly—but rather with a weariness that James has come to pity him for. Nevertheless, he cannot help thinking of David’s words, his request that he speak to Will about the crew. “You still ought to pay the men more mind,” he says.

Will turns, an expression on his face that is somewhere between amusement and irritation. “I did not call you hear to speak about the crew,” he says, walking forward. “We will drop anchor soon.”

Through the window behind him, James can see the hazy shape of the island. He nods toward it. “What is that place?”

“That place,” Will says, “is the end of our searching. We will find Elizabeth there.”

James frowns. He does not like the brand of determination in Will’s voice, which is less hopeful and more menacing. “As we found her at the Isla de Muerta?” he risks.

As he knew it would, Will’s face darkens. “Going there was foolish,” he says. “I ought to have known better. But this will be different.” He makes a sudden, aborted movement, as if he wishes to look back towards the window and the island once more, but stays where he is in the end. Facing James, his eyes clouded. “Elizabeth and I stayed here for a time. There are better memories here than in that cave—happier memories.”

But James thinks that he does not sound happy, speaking about it. He is not sure what they will find on the island, but he knows already that it will not be Elizabeth—and when he looks at Will, whose eyes will not meet his, he wonders whether Will has not already realized this himself.

Despite his misgivings, he does not protest when Will suggests that he make himself ready to go ashore, as if James had any possessions or equipment to prepare. He experiences another lurch of doubt and dread, however, when Will walks out of his cabin after they drop anchor and it becomes apparent that only Will and James, and no one else, will be climbing down the railing and into the waiting boat. He recalls again his conversation with David, and cannot help noticing several of the crew gathered about to see them off: men with tense stances and stony gazes, apparently discontent to be left behind.

And among them, James sees David himself. He is standing near Moreno, but not beside him, and his gaze is fixed not on Will, but on James. When James meets his eyes, he gives no other sign beyond a minute nod, but it is enough. James knows he is being reproached for delaying: _Tell the captain. Remind him of his debt to us._

When they are rowing towards the island, the mist closed nearly completely about them, the silence is broken only by the oars in the water. Will appears to be concentrating single-mindedly on rowing, and yet James thinks he catches a glance thrown in his own direction now and again. It irks him, to once again be left in the dark about whatever it is Will is thinking, but although he does not want to give Will the satisfaction by speaking first, neither can he remain silent forever. “It is fortunate for you,” he says at last, his voice echoing eerily over the water, “that I can touch solid objects, don’t you think?” He raps the seat beneath him with his knuckles, and that, too, echoes. “Since you cannot go ashore. It hasn’t yet been ten years.”

“Indeed,” Will says, so simply that James begins to think he has imagined it when no other words follow.

James considers continuing to press him, more directly this time. He might ask what, precisely, happened on this island—what happy memories Will thinks might tie Elizabeth to the spot. But James is not sure he wants to know. He might also tell Will of the message from David, demand that he pay the crew more respect, as if Will would listen should James demand anything. Even beyond the absurdity of that idea, something else stops him. The same sense of apprehension as before, perhaps, heightening as they near the island. Or a new fear: something as yet unknown.

Gradually, their little boat draws near enough to the shallows that the mist thins again. It does not clear away entirely, but James begins to make out more than the mere shape of the island: he can see a sandy shore, and beyond it grass-covered hills sloping up. He is not sure, but he thinks perhaps there are cliffs away to the east. “It looks like a pleasant place,” he says.

Does he imagine it, or is there a hint of a smile on Will’s face? “It is.”

James hesitates again—but he cannot avoid the question, despite how strangely Will reacts whenever James deigns to ask him anything of late. “What is it, exactly, that you wish me to do?” he asks. “Am I to leave you in the boat and search the island on my own?” He supposes that if he encounters some ghostly woman in the hills, it will all be clear enough, but he doubts he will find anything as obvious as that. “I do not even know what to look for.”

Will shakes his head. “There is another way. You cannot see it from the ship.” And he angles the boat west, along the shore, until James sees that there is a small ingress in the otherwise sandy shore. As they approach, he sees that it is the mouth of a river flowing out from between the hills: clear and narrow, but deep enough for their boat to row against the current. “We can follow this to the middle of the island,” Will tells James. “The land is gentler there.”

The land seems fairly gentle to James already. The hills that rise around them are thick with grass and the bed of the river is full of pale stones. He can see why Will and Elizabeth would have stayed here—and the thought is bittersweet. “I spoke to David not long ago,” he says abruptly, reminded once again. “Two nights ago.”

“What did you speak about?” Will asks. He is rowing against the slow current, and is faintly out of breath.

James does not reply at once. He is thinking of the different answers he might give, about the mist, and debts, and the fear Will may or may not have of James himself. In the end, he says none of those things. “He and Moreno,” he says finally, “they are like us.” He does not catch himself in time; the words ring in his ears like a slap. “Like we once were.”

It is impossible to say with certainty, due to the cloudy light and the motion of the boat, but James thinks Will’s knuckles whiten on the oars. He, too, is silent for a long time, so long that James nearly begins to wonder if he did not hear. The misty hills flow slowly past. “What makes you think that?” he asks at last.

“A number of things,” James tells him. “But when he spoke of Moreno, I could tell. It would have been obvious to anyone who truly listened.” He watches Will closely, waiting for a reaction, anything beyond this steady, laborious rowing. “I could hear the lies in his voice—I remember what it was like to tell them myself.” He pauses, then asks in spite of himself, “Do you?”

Now Will does look at him—there is no mistaking it—and his face is a riot of emotion that shocks James. He cannot understand it; he does not know whether he is seeing anger, grief, fear, or hatred. “I do remember,” Will admits. He lowers his face again, putting his back into the rowing.

The relief that follows is strange. After all, Will has shown every moment that he remembers, in every sideways glance and cold word; he could hardly have forgotten. And James knows, as well, that it cannot be a pleasant thing to remember, not in light of all that came after it. After them. And James was the reason. No, it cannot be happy—and yet James _is_ relieved, dizzily and breathlessly, as a drowning man breaking the surface. He finds he is simply grateful that Will does not deny it and leave unspoken even the barest whisper of what passed between them.

The island grows tamer as they move farther from the sea. The hills have deep valleys with grass that is not so wild and long, but makes him think rather of England and the well-trod paths above Port Royal. A good place to live. And then, just as he thinks it, he glimpses, around the bend in the river, a path—not well-trod at all, but rather overgrown. Hardly there at all in some places. Yet unmistakably etched into the face of the hill, rising up from the riverbank as they row towards it. James stares and notices, away on a farther hill, a half-fallen fence of the type that country farmers use to pen in sheep. There is a path leading there as well.

“You did not simply stay here,” he says aloud, still facing away, then turns back to Will. “You lived here.” He can see on Will’s face that it is true, but the silence alone would have confirmed it. “For how long?”

“For me?” Will asks quietly. “One day every ten years.”

James pauses, torn between pity and disbelief. “And—Elizabeth kept a house for you, all that time?” He finds it hard to imagine, but he does not say it.

Will’s rueful smile tells him that he did not need to. “She came with me, more often than not. On the _Dutchman,_ or in her own ship. But she always came back, particularly when Henry was young. And when I could go ashore, we would always meet here.”

There is so much that James does not understand, he hardly knows where to begin. But in the end, all he can say is, “Henry?”

Will’s smile turns inward. “Our son.”

 _Our son._ Anything he might have said catches in James’s throat, stopped by something stronger than the usual pity, something deeper and more bitter. Those two words from Will seem to open up a world that James has not yet glimpsed, just as the hills open up to the sky from the steep banks of this narrow river, and James is breathless at the wasted, blighted expanse of it. This pain that is his and yet not his, blessedly distant and yet all too near.

He does not notice that they have stopped until Will speaks again. “This is the best place to leave the river.”

The boat is resting in shallow water, the prow touching a sandy bank. James can see the crumbling remains of a post that was once used to tie off boats, though its rope has long since rotted away. He places his hands on the side of the boat, but hesitates before standing up. “Are there any signs I ought to look for?” he asks.

Will inclines his head towards the sharpening slope of the bank. “There is a house over the ridge. She would be nearby—or up on the cliffs.” He gestures vaguely eastward.

James can see the traces of another path leading up from the bank, to the crest of the ridge where Will first indicated. Unease fills him as he looks to the place where it leads—a line of grass against the sky, and beyond to unknown fields. He knows that Will is watching him, a look that might be impatient, though James does not dare meet his gaze directly. He tightens his hands on the rough wood of the boat, rises steadily to his feet, and steps ashore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr](http://blanketed-in-stars.tumblr.com). Comments are love! <3


	6. Overfalls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Overfalls: dangerously steep and breaking seas.

Will does not speak as James ascends the overgrown path, and the wind and rushing sea fill his ears so that by the time he reaches the top of the ridge, he could not have heard the words in any case. He pauses there, not wanting to waste time—he knows Will is impatient, though he has not said so—but eagerness and apprehension war in him, making the way forward difficult.

From where he stands, the island opens before him: a broad plateau between the valleys and higher hills, filled with waving grass and patches of thin mist, and in the middle of the fields, a house. James takes several unthinking steps toward it before he hesitates one last time, and when he looks back he can no longer see down the slope to Will’s boat. He turns back toward the house. It is, in truth, a ruin, worn near to shambles by twenty years’ storms without tending. The windows are dark holes, the roof is half-thatched and rotted, and clinging moss covers large swaths of the walls. If he were alive, he thinks, he would fear to go inside. He walks forward.

Several yards from the house, he encounters the fence, so thickly grown with moss that he nearly stumbles over it without seeing. Once he realizes what it is, James recognizes the garden beyond it. What he had at first taken for simple wildflowers, he now sees must have been ordered beds. He can hardly picture Elizabeth kneeling in the dirt, and yet someone must have. And someone must have made the fence, too, and built the house. Not Will, who only rarely went ashore. Their son, perhaps—Henry? Or Elizabeth herself?

These are questions, James knows, which he cannot answer here or now. But he thinks that the garden is lovely despite its disarray, and the yellow, white, and purple flowers are bright against the dark house. He walks through them slowly, seeing no sign of the path anymore. When he reaches the door, or the gap where it would have been, he can see clearly that the house is a simple one, only a few rooms at most. It is dark within, but James knows from nights aboard the _Dutchman_ that the light of his own body, such as it is, will suffice, and so he goes inside.

He half-expects, a lingering half-hopeful superstition, that something will happen the moment he crosses the threshold—perhaps that Elizabeth herself will appear, or that some new undead horror will arise to ward him off from this place where he ought not to be. But James knows those thoughts are foolish, and indeed, the house is still. The faint sea is the only sound.

“Elizabeth?” he calls anyway, and receives no reply. He looks around the room. The wood floor is rotted nearly away to the dirt beneath, the walls are stained, and the pale gray sky stares down from between the rib-like rafters. Yet everywhere James looks, he sees things that must once have been beautiful. The tatters of handsome drapes hang around the windows, and a spotted, cracked mirror in an ornate frame lies at the foot of the wall where it has fallen. A crumbling chair sits in the corner.

James moves through the room carefully, but despite his caution, his foot catches on the edge of the moldering carpet. He looks down and sees the floorboards showing through the richly-woven cloth—and then he stops, and looks closer. It is not merely the floorboards he is seeing, he realizes, but a small trapdoor set into the planks. He kneels down, the scent of earth in his nose, and pulls on the handle of the door. It comes off in his hand, the hinge having rusted away. James fits his fingers into the seam at the door’s edges and pulls up, and it comes away.

The hole is not deep, and James could see from the door that it is far too small for a person to fit through in any case. He peers down: a sheaf of parchment rests within, covered in a thin script. James picks up the first brittle, spotted page, and reads by the bleak light.

_Dear Will,_

_I am not going to take your advice about the fleet. I know you think that Captain Bennett will make trouble, but I have dealt with him before. If he tries anything, I shall send someone over to look at him very hard, and I expect he’ll soon give in. Either that, or I’ll find some prize his men want, and promise to get it for him. Of course he’ll say no, because he hates it when he must admit that I know what I am doing and he does not, but the very offer will remind him that I do know what I’m doing, and he will hate that as well. So all his ships will follow me either way. You are right to expect that Bennett will be difficult, but his brand of difficulty is quite silly. I appreciate your advice to be cautious: you are right there, too. But I will not be so cautious that I lose what I need._

_On the other matter, though, I cannot say whether I will take your advice. You must have worried when I did not mention it in my last letter, and I admit I deliberately left it out. I was not sure what was true, and I did not want to promise you too much. But I know that the decision is mine, and no amount of worrying at the problem will make it any less so. You ask if I will join you in the autumn and spend the winter with you on the Dutchman. I did think at first that I would say yes at once, but now this business with the “little kings”, as Henry calls them, has dragged on so long that I cannot be sure. I do not want to say no, but I fear I would eventually disappoint you even were I to say yes._

_Please believe me that I miss you. Well, I know it was foolish to write that now that it is in on the page; I know that you are well aware, as often as I have said it before and as bitter as all our partings must be. But I do not want to leave you with even a shred of doubt: I do miss you, Will, and I think each evening that, having made it through the day, I am one day closer to seeing you again—even if I do not know precisely when that will be. I know you are busy with your voyage, as always, and I have much to do as well. Yet if I could somehow have it all done at once—put the court in order, and ferry the souls where they must go, and be near to you—just to be near to you and hear your voice—you must know that I would do so without a moment’s hesitation. If you fear that I am reluctant to write straight words on the subject of the coming autumn because I am averse to the prospect of returning to the Dutchman, then let me put that ghost, at least, to rest. I count the unnumbered days till we shall be together again, and I pray their number is few._

_I have looked back over what I have written, and I think now you may have begun to worry that my very protestations are a sign that I am too much in doubt. Yet every word is true. And now I have made up my mind that if Bennett does require something firmer than a hard look, I will tell one of my own men to deal with him and leave for the Dutchman, wherever she is, as soon as I can come up with a plan for my absence. We will see winter together, I promise you. Even writing this fills me with such happiness that I know it would have been folly to decide otherwise._

_But I hope you are keeping busy and not languishing with loneliness for the moment. I promise I am not. We have been tracking this current prize for several weeks, and the crew are anxious to board her. I expect we will catch her tomorrow. We have heard that there is Spanish wine aboard, among other things—not the most long-lived spoils, but better than what we keep in our own stores. I will tell you in my next letter of the outcome. I already expect the crew will greatly enjoy announcing (as they always do) to the other captain just who is about to board their ship. They do not seem to mind how I hold them to merciful treatment of the sailors, or if they do mind, they know not to disobey. They seem to find enough satisfaction in calling me "King Swann" or some even loftier title. It makes me laugh and I feel there is no need to embellish my reputation so far beyond what it has already become, but I must admit I have yet to raise any objection._

_I must end this letter soon, or there will be no time left in the evening to see about the plans for tomorrow. Give Henry my love, write when you are able, and trust that I will make the necessary arrangements to stay with you for the winter. I love and miss you as always._

_All my heart,_

_Elizabeth_

With the letter held in his numb, trembling hand, James feels himself frozen in place, kneeling. The strange whirl of emotions within him is such that several moments pass before he can think anything at all. It is clear to him now, in a way that he knows it ought to have been in life, the degree to which Elizabeth loved Will—even beyond the declarations, every word speaks volumes. Not only of her love, but of _life,_ life beyond measure, beyond what he could have hoped for. Beyond, he knows, anything James himself could have given either her or Will. The thought is bitter, but not for himself—rather, he feels pity for Will, who loved Elizabeth in return and lost her. Lost all the vivid spirit that James now holds between his fingers.

And how happy they must have been. James had caught glimpses of that happiness before, in Will’s words, but he can hear Elizabeth’s voice in this letter as clearly as if she had spoken to him, and he can hear that she and Will had a comfort in each other that was more than simple safety or a moment’s contentment. True joy, James thinks, and lasting, despite the leagues between them and through all the years. He realizes that he is weeping—ghostly pale tears that vanish before they touch the page, for nothing of him can stay in the world—for a loss that was not even his own. The flame that was snuffed out, the brief blaze of two happy lives that he can see now in his mind’s eye and all around him as he kneels in this empty house. Their house.

James blinks away his tears, peering closer at the cavity in the floorboards. Beneath the letter—he lifts up the whole sheaf of parchment, places it beside the hole—there is a box, and three shapes wrapped in musty cloth. He picks the latter up, unwrapping them. When he sees what they are, he thinks it might have been better had he left them covered. They are three portraits, each small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, but painted so delicately that no detail is lost with the size. One shows Will, one Elizabeth, older than James knew her, and one a brown-haired, serious-looking youth who can only be Henry.

The sight of the paintings is more overwhelming than the letter: and yet although he feels another shock of grief, there is a trace, or more than a trace, of relief. This was their house, and they are gone from it forever—but they were here, and lived for a time together in peace and joy. Or so he must believe, from what Will has told him and what he has just read in Elizabeth’s letter. James is glad of it, despite the pain. That he was able to die for her, to give her this life—that it was not for nothing, even if now all traces of that life have vanished like iron beneath calm water.

Or—nearly all traces. James thinks of Will, roaming endlessly, and at this moment waiting not far off. With care, he wraps the paintings again and slips two into his pocket. The box still beneath the floorboards, he leaves where it is—he can see that it is locked, and he has the sense that he has intruded too far already. He places the letters back where they were and lowers the door shut again.

He stands and is confronted again with the ruined furniture, the failing walls. He moves into the next room, a kitchen with a soot-choked fireplace in which some absent animal has made its nest. Beyond that, a bedroom that he passes by without entering. The last room: at the back of the house, and destroyed by the storms that must have caught it full-force. The eastward wall is gone entirely and grass grows between James’s feet, all furniture long since crumbled, but for a couple mossy bits of wood. The legs of a table or desk, perhaps, or supports for a shelf. Another mystery. James turns away from the wide expanse of grass, goes back into the dark house.

Here, within the aged walls, the joy returns to him in some small measure. He cannot help but notice, despite the ruin, how polished the wood must once have been, how rich the cloth. The whole place has a strange air of comfort. Yet there is no one in this house—that much was clear to James the moment he set foot inside, and it is even more apparent now. Elizabeth is not here. She was never here.

Feeling more than ever as if he ought not to linger, James walks out into the garden again. He can see the cliffs Will had mentioned away to the east, and makes for them, not without relief at putting the house behind him. The way is not hard, but still he goes slowly. More small flowers dot the overgrown path.

He reaches the cliffs, and the smell of salt rises up to meet him like a tall wave. The rushing fills his ears, though the cliffs are high enough that James cannot see the breakers on the shore below. This place is empty, too: looking along the cliff to the north and south, there is no one. As he knew there would be.

After a moment of gazing towards the misty horizon—the sun shines weakly behind him, and James fancies he can see the _Dutchman’s_ mast in the fog—he turns again, away from the sea, back to face the house. The sight of it, in more light than before, surrounded by flowers, and knowing what is inside, nearly brings James to his knees. As it is, he stumbles a moment in the grass, then sits heavily on the path. It is too much, James thinks, too much for anyone to bear—all the life and history here, such as James himself has never known; the thought of how sweet it must have been, and the grief he cannot help but feel that it is gone. He aches with pity for Will, sorrow for his loss, he wants to tell him—what?

The truth, James knows, he can never say. He wants to tell Will that if he, James, was too blind to be happy with Will, then he is so very glad that Will and Elizabeth were able to make a happy and long life together. That if he took such a thing from Will, at least he did not take it forever; at least he gave it back in the end, though he thought only of himself and his own loss at the time.

No, he could never speak those words aloud. Will would not want to hear them, and James would not know how to give them voice in a way that anyone could understand. He hardly understands it himself. The only thing James understands—sitting in the grass with his head bowed, no tears on his cheeks—all he can fathom is that what he feels for Will is the same thing he felt when he died, when they crossed blades, when he said farewell in the smithy at dawn. He loves Will, is in love with him, no matter how much time has passed, how much has gone between them, how pointless it seems, how desperately he wishes it weren't so. In life or death, he cannot escape it. He loves Will and all he wants is for him to be happy, whatever the cost—but he is alone on an island with no other ghosts beside himself and the love he cannot give up.

In the end it is desperation and guilt that drive James to his feet. He knows that it would be cruel to delay his return longer, lest Will start to think he has found something. Slowly, no longer stumbling but clear-eyed and steady, he walks back down the path. Toward the house and past it without looking, then down the sandy hill to the boat.

He gets into the boat silently, feeling Will’s eyes on him, knowing he must speak but at a loss for what to say.

It is Will who breaks the silence. “She is not there.”

James shakes his head. “No.” It seems a paltry thing to say, too small, but he notices that Will does not seem surprised, or angry, or even truly sad—he simply nods and begins to row them out. James watches him while trying not to appear to do so, fighting with the words that want to come out of his mouth. At last he can bear it no longer. “It looked a beautiful place to live,” he says, thinking more of the shape of the house in sunlight than of the ruin within.

“It was.” There is a pause, and then Will asks, smiling as he rows, “Did you see the flowers?”

James nods.

“We never planted them. They overran the gardens every year, Elizabeth said.”

James does not know what to make of the tone in his voice. “They are everywhere now,” he replies. Indeed, he sees that as they pass the hills by again, the flowers still dot the grass, small islands of color amid a second gray-green sea. “She always did love flowers,” he says, and though it seems pointless to say, it’s true. There were always vases of wildflowers, too small for their large bronze vessels, in the governor’s house.

Their boat reaches the mouth of the river, and Will strikes out for the ship. James looks to him in the quiet and finds that Will is gazing back. “So did you,” Will says.

James falters and looks away. Whatever Will might have said about remembering on the journey to the island, James had not thought to hear any more about it. Not ever, and certainly not today.

“You drew me a flower, once,” Will says when James still does not reply. “You left it on the bed when you went away.”

In a cruel twist of irony, James does not remember this. He supposes he must have done it, though, sketched something quickly and left it where Will would see it and smile. The sort of thing anyone young and in love might do. Or perhaps—his heart sinks—perhaps he did it as the end drew near, when he felt torn and shadowed and ruinous with guilt. Perhaps the flower was meant to soften the blow he had not yet struck.

James dare not ask to make sure. And he knows Will is watching him, waiting for a response. He dredges up something to say instead of this damning silence. “Where will we go now?” he asks. “Since she is not here?”

Will rows for a minute without speaking. “I think,” he says at last, “that we ought to make for world’s end. It feels pointless to delay any longer, and I can think of nowhere else that she might be.”

Again, James hesitates. He finds it difficult to imagine what will happen when they pass beyond the world and arrive wherever they are going—not only the impossibility of navigating there, but what they will find. Will it be like a scene out of legend, with Elizabeth standing on the far shore, waving to their ship as it comes in? James cannot fathom it, yet that seems to be just what Will expects.

“Say what you are thinking,” Will prompts.

After so long, James supposes he ought not to be surprised that Will knows when he is conflicted. “Are you sure she will be there?” he asks.

He can guess Will’s response before it leaves his mouth. “She must be.”

Again, that hard and foreign determination, strong as steel and as cold. James wonders if it was in Will when they were together, hidden beneath their love and hope and willful oblivion, or if it is something new—forged in the years since Elizabeth’s death, or earlier perhaps. He does not like to think on it. “You said you would let the crew go ashore,” he reminds Will.

Will nods. “I intend to keep that promise.”

“But,” James says, “how will you sail to world’s end without a crew?”

The _Dutchman_ appears out of the fog behind them, huge and dark. “There is no need of a crew at world’s end,” Will tells him. “There, the sea has a current as swift as a river. We can let it take us where we are trying to go.”

As he speaks, James can tell that he is seeing it in his mind. He had nearly forgotten, somehow, that Will has been to the end of the world before. “What is it like there?”

“It’s difficult to say,” Will says, pulling hard on the oars to steer them alongside the ship. “I have only been to the very beginning of the end. But I do not know whether Davy Jones’ Locker remains now that its gaelor is gone.”

“You do not use it,” James guesses.

It was not meant as an accusation, but Will gives him a reproachful look. “I am not Jones. I have no need of a place to punish those who will not join my crew.” The rope ladder drops down from the rail high above, clattering for a moment between the rowboat and the side of the ship. Will glances up towards the rail, then turns back to James with a sigh. “The locker takes the shape of the greatest fears of its prisoners. When I was there, it was a great sea of white sand, but if it is still there, I do not know what form it will take.”

James watches Will reach out and catch the ladder. He is trying and failing to imagine what they might encounter upon arrival in the locker, what shape their fears might assume. “If it is still there,” he replies, “and Elizabeth is waiting, would it not shape itself after her own fears?”

Will pauses. “Perhaps,” he allows. James can tell that he has not yet considered this possibility. “I dare say we will find out.”

Before James can say anything in response, Will has begun the climb up the ladder. James follows him, but by the time he finds himself standing on the deck, Will is vanishing into his cabin with Godwin.

The men hauling the boat up after them pay James no mind, but many of the other crew members on deck are watching him warily. James supposes it is strange that Will took only him ashore and no one else, when he took both Abbot and Simmons along as well to search the Isla de Muerta. None of them speak to him, however, and gradually the men’s attention returns to their work.

“Well?” comes a voice at James’s elbow. James turns. It is David, neither hauling up the anchor nor working the rigging to make ready to sail, but rather standing with his arms crossed, looking up at James. “What did the captain say?”

“Ah.” James hesitates, taken aback at David’s expectant expression. But he did broach the topic, after all, on the way back from the island. “I did mention your concern to him,” he says.

“And?”

“He said he would let the crew ashore before reaching world’s end.” James frowns when David does not look satisfied. “He is keeping his promise, is he not?”

David presses his mouth to a thin line before answering. “Did he say anything else?”

James shakes his head. “Was there something else he was supposed to promise?”

“Yes, and he knows it.” David’s eyes leave James to rove over the crew, who are working without pause. Several moments pass before he speaks. “I think you ought to speak with him again.”

“Why do you not simply speak to him yourself, and tell him whatever you wish to say?” James demands, more confused than vexed.

“Because I took an oath,” David says, so forcefully that he seems to surprise himself. “I owe the captain a debt,” he says, more quietly, so that it is nearly lost in the noise.

“He told me he did not require oaths from the crew,” James says. He cannot keep the horror from his voice.

David does not appear to notice. “I should be very surprised,” he says, still watching the rest of the men, “if anyone else on this ship has taken the same vow that I have.”

“Yet you spoke before of loyalty,” James presses. “What do you mean? Are the men bound to the ship, or not?”

“Not in the way that you are thinking,” David says, looking back to James at last. “There is nothing magical about it. But I took an oath that I cannot break, any more than the captain is able to go ashore. So I cannot speak to him myself.”

“Cannot,” James says, “or will not?”

David pauses. “I will not.”

David is a head or more shorter than James, but the look in his eyes nearly makes James take a step backwards. Yet it is the sight of his hands, clenched so tightly around nothing that the knuckles are white, that finally moves James to ask, “What is it that I should ask the captain?”

“Tell him what you did before,” David says.

James tries and fails to bite back his frustration. “He will give me the same answer.”

“No. He knows what is owed.”

It is clear from David’s expression that he will neither relent with further protestations, nor tell James what he means. He has an air of singular desperation and nearly indomitable stubbornness about him, from the moment James met him but particularly so now. James half-wishes he were the sort of man who would insist on an explanation or refuse the task altogether—and perhaps he was such a man at one time—but he cannot bring himself to say no.

He is not, however, so unquestioning as to approach Will then and there, despite the impatient gaze David sends after him as he walks away. Instead he spends the rest of the day and much of the evening staying out of sight, as much to postpone the promised conversation as to avoid anyone suspicious enough to ask him about the captain’s motivation for taking him ashore.

The mist closes around the _Dutchman_ again as she sails away from the island, so that by the time night falls, James can no longer make out the sea beyond the rail, though he can hear the waves against the hull of the ship. He can hear some of the crew talking in low voices behind him as he skirts the deck, and the faint whistle of wind in the rigging. And he can hear—

“Have you grown used to it yet?” Will speaks from behind him, betrayed only moments before by his footsteps, and comes to walk beside James. “I have not.”

“The mist?” Out of the corner of his eye, James can see Will nod. “No. And I still cannot quite grasp the fact that all of it is made of—souls. Spirits. Anything more than the usual vapor.”

“I understand,” Will says. “Sometimes I wonder whether the mist does not simply follow the _Dutchman_ wherever she goes, so that it only appears to be everywhere. Surely this endless fog does not cover the entire ocean, or even the entire Caribbean. Though I suppose we would have no way of knowing otherwise,” Will adds, sounding almost amused.

There is no trace in his voice of the uncertainty from their last conversation in the boat, nor of the grief he had voiced before that. It is, James thinks, as if he has forgotten the island entirely—but he knows that cannot be the case, if for no other reason than the fleeting glances Will continues to send him every minute.

He ought to keep his agreement with David, make mention again of debts. Impress the message upon Will, though James himself does not know what it means. He would like to pretend that this uncertainty is what makes him hesitate, but he knows it is also the thought of Will’s words when he mentioned David this morning. _I do remember._ What else does Will remember, besides the lies and a hastily-drawn flower? James finds he is afraid to even speak David’s name to Will, lest he discover an answer he cannot bear.

Will breaks the silence again. “I want,” he says, “to thank you.”

The change in his tone is so marked that James looks around: no longer musing, but stiff. Reminiscent of James’s first days aboard the _Dutchman,_ but lacking that resentful heat. “Whatever would you thank me for?” James asks, unable to keep himself from sounding surprised.

“For the favor you paid me today,” Will replies. “Going ashore and searching the island when I could not.”

“Of course,” James says at once, at once saddened and relieved that Will does not know James would have done it without being asked. “It was the least I could do.”

“And also,” Will continues heavily, “for what you did for Elizabeth.”

If there were blood in James’s veins, it would run cold. He flounders for words, not knowing how to respond or whether he even should.

“You saved her life,” Will goes on. “Though it cost you your own.”

He clearly wants to say more, but James finds his voice and cuts across him. “Do not thank me,” he says. “What I did—it was something I ought to have done much earlier, if I had not been so blind. I fear that before that point, I made many choices that you would never think to thank me for.”

Will is looking it him, James can see it at the edge of his vision, but he cannot bring himself to look. “I know,” Will says. Matter-of-fact, as if they were discussing the weather. “But that makes it all the more remarkable that you would choose as you did, knowing what you would lose.”

James finds himself lost for words again, a pain in his chest that is not unlike the sting of that final blade. He cannot fathom the kindness that Will is paying him in speaking as he does—in sparing him the truth that what is most remarkable is the selflessness of the act, the honorable path, the sacrifice, all things which Will knows only too well have been oblations on the altar of James’s ambition. Until, it is true, he chose otherwise. But James cannot deceive himself that it was not much too little and far too late. “I cannot,” he says, and steadies his voice. “I do not deserve your thanks. I did not do it for you. I am not—I do not know why I did it.”

They reach the prow of the ship, where the bowsprit stabs blindly into the fog. “I know why,” Will says.

Now James does turn to look at him. “You do?”

“Of course,” Will says, looking back. “I know you, or I did once. And you gave your life for Elizabeth’s because you are a good man, whatever else you might be.” He says it simply, without irony or even a pause, indeed so smoothly that James wonders if he has misheard. But then Will smiles, not at James but in his direction, and gazes away into the mist.

James opens his mouth and closes it, searching in vain for a way to thank Will while also disagreeing with him. Whichever way he turns, he comes up empty-handed: on the island, and speaking with David, and now. He does not know what Will wants, what he is thinking, and so James is woefully unprepared for the things that come out of his mouth. Strangely, Will does not seem bothered by the silence; though he is no longer smiling, he rests his hands on the gunwale where they have come to a halt. As if he had not said anything out of the ordinary, as if they are out together for nothing more than an evening walk.

His nonchalance is almost enough, finally, to fool James, to make him forget. In the end, however, he reaches into his pocket. The movement attracts Will’s attention, and it is under his curious gaze that James pulls forth the two lumps of moldering cloth. “I thought you might like to have these,” James says, paltry words, and passes them over.

It is clear from the way Will pulls the wrapping aside that he does not know what he has in his hands. He pauses then and holds the portraits, the cloth dropping limply to the deck, staring down at the paint that has not faded or cracked. James waits for a response, but the silence goes on for so long that he cannot help but try to read meaning into Will’s expression, half-hidden as he bows his head. His hands around the portraits are careful, though he is almost entirely still—James can see the lightness with which he holds them.

At last Will speaks in a voice brittle and dry as old parchment. “You found these in the house?”

James nods. He does not mention the letters, certain that Will would hate for him to have read even one. “I thought,” he begins, and falls silent. He does not know what to say. James is not sure what he expected, taking the paintings from the island and giving them now, as if they were some kind of gift. But how could it have been a good idea, when every mention of his family causes Will pain, when these images must be like salt in a wound?

“I had forgotten,” Will says, lifting one of the paintings slightly: the one depicting Elizabeth. “The way she smiled.” And then he looks up at James—not smiling himself, indeed with a strange look in his eyes that seems half-formed between grief and anger.

James takes a step back without intending to, and Will drops his gaze at once. “Thank you again,” he says, his voice as stiff and constricted as before. His fingers seem clamped around the paintings. “You truly saw no trace of her?” he asks.

The question sounds hopeless, and James is weary of hearing it—of asking it to himself a thousand times over—but he answers without bitterness. “No. I searched the house and the cliffs. She was not there; everything was—empty,” he finishes. He does not want to say _ruined._

Will turns his face back toward James, and that frightful expression is gone, though in the gloom James thinks something of it lingers around his mouth. “I miss her,” he says, and the words seem torn out of him, violent even though they are whispered. He looks nearly frightened of his own admission.

James cannot think how to respond, can hardly imagine the depth of loss that must drive Will to say this to him, of all people. “I am sure that she misses you as well,” he manages with an effort that is no less for speaking the truth. The evidence, after all, is all around them.

The dark gathers about Will like a shroud as he looks at James, still clutching the portraits, something frozen about the way he stands there half-turned, a painting himself. “Do you think we will find her?” he asks.

Hearing the pleading note in his voice, the memories rise unbidden: Will in the smithy just before dawn, saying _you can’t leave it like this_ with dry eyes, Will raising a sword to block James’s blow, Will sitting in his cabin not two weeks earlier with the lines of his face carved from stone, saying _if I must, I will swim._ All of that certainty is gone now. How much James would give to know what they will find. How dearly he wishes to comfort him.

The moment passes when James might have answered, and Will makes a sudden movement, both towards and away. As if he had been about to move closer to James—but that instant passes as well, and then Will has put the two small portraits inside his own coat and returned both his hands to the railing, looking out. He says nothing as the sudden shift in the breeze tugs at his hair and the rigging and blows through James as if he were not there at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are love <3


	7. Sail Close to the Wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sail close to the wind: to be on the verge of being improper or dangerous, or to sail in the direction from which the wind is coming, but still make headway.

The mist clears again somewhat on the third day after their stop at the island, so that dawn comes with a startling clarity, as if the whole world is lit by the reflection of sun on a piece of polished glass. There are still traces of vapor around them, obscuring most of the horizon—yet James gathers with the rest of the crew at the rail, feasting his eyes on the sight of the glittering water, blue instead of gray, as the last fading stars wink out of the endless sky.

That day the wind takes them farther and faster than usual. James is grateful for the change, not only because it raises his spirits but also because he has heard the men muttering around him, no longer bothering to hide their words. They are impatient, anxious, mistrustful: in a word, mutinous. He cannot tell whether Will notes the change, but if he does, he makes no move to soothe them. The wind, he thinks, may well do some part of what Will is unwilling or unable to do. Though why he should be unwilling, James cannot say.

Despite the weather, Will does not appear on deck, so James takes it upon himself to knock on his cabin door shortly after midday. “Might I come in?” he asks.

He cannot hear any reply through the thick wood, with the men shouting and the sea heaving behind him, but the door opens almost immediately. “It is a shame you cannot simply walk through walls,” Will says wryly, standing aside to let James in. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

James turns as he shuts the door, surprised at how much light fills the cabin from the small windows. He cannot square it with what he remembers of this dark and haunted room. Nor does he know what to make of Will’s manner, unexpectedly sunny. He guesses it is nothing more than politeness. But James has little time for politeness now. “I spoke with David again,” he says. “He wishes me to bring a message to you—and I suppose I do not rightly know what it is, but—well, I think you ought to listen to him.” James pauses, expecting Will to interrupt, but there is nothing. Will watches him, waiting. “He asked me to remind you of the debt you owe him. And the rest of the crew. But I believe he referred to himself in particular.”

To James, the message is nonsensical, and part of him truly expects Will to dismiss it as madness as well. And indeed, Will stares at him for a moment as if he does not understand—but then he crosses his arms and sighs. “And he told you he could not talk to me himself, no doubt?”

Now it is James’s turn to stare. “Yes,” he admits.

Will sighs again. “What a foolish—” He raises one finger. “I can guess at what he is doing, and it is pointless. Worse, it will hurt those who care about him.”

“What is he doing?” James demands.

As if his exasperation is beyond words, Will shakes his head and strides to the cabin door, looking as if he means to march out onto the deck. Then he turns. “What else did he tell you?” Will asks curiously.

“Nothing, truly,” James replies. “Every question I asked, he either turned back on me or simply refused to answer. That man keeps more secrets than—well, than you,” he finishes awkwardly, not sure whether he has overstepped.

Will nods, subdued, but James cannot tell whether it is because of his last words or not. “He told you no stories about how he came to be on this crew?”

James shakes his head, thinking back. “The only story he told me was about the men who were caught in that black mist before. He spoke of Moreno’s brother.”

“Luis,” Will supplies. “Yes, it affected him worse than the others.”

“Worse than the two men who died?”

Will hesitates, then takes a few slow steps away from the door, closer to James. “Luis did die,” he says quietly. “He returned to Spain, and then he wasted away, according to the letter of inheritance. He left all he owned to Moreno.”

The words have a strange, echoing impact in James’s mind, triggering the memory of David when he had first mentioned Luis: _don’t speak of Luis to him, don’t hurt him like that._ The grief must still be fresh—the news cannot have come more than a couple months ago, shortly before James was fished from the waves. “How can he bear it?” James asks, half to himself. “To continue serving on the _Dutchman_ when his brother was killed on board?”

Only when Will’s expression goes tight and dark does James realize how his words must sound: full of blame. “I offered him the chance to go ashore,” Will says. “He would not take it.”

“Because of David?”

“I assumed so.” Will shakes his head. “David is drawn to the adventure of this ship, more than most of the other men. He—”

“He did not speak of adventure,” James interrupts. “He said he swore an oath. And you,” he adds, his confusion returning in full force, “you said you held your crew to no oaths.”

Will regards him with a touch of impatience, but then his expression clears. “It is a long story,” he says. “Longer than we have time to tell at the moment. But I can say this much for now: when David swore that he would serve me aboard the _Dutchman,_ he did so out of gratitude. I did not ask him to swear, nor would I ever demand that he honor the vow he made.”

“I doubt that will matter much to him,” James says, thinking of David’s impassioned face.

“Hm,” Will says, a wry smile on his lips, “perhaps not.” Then he shakes his head, suddenly businesslike. “The problem cannot be solved this minute—nor for the rest of the day, I expect. We will make landfall within the hour.”

“Again?” James cannot keep the frustration from his tone, nor does he attempt to. “What, do you mean to stop at every island we pass between here and world’s end? The crew will jump ship if you do not bring them to civilization soon.”

For once, Will does not insist that James is wrong. “They will have their time to leave if they wish to,” he says.

“Surely you have noticed their discontent?” James asks. He sees the answer plain in Will’s eyes. “You have already ignored them for too long.” Will nods, but James is not convinced that he understands. “I fear they will mutiny,” he presses. “You push them too far, and they will refuse.”

Now Will does argue. “They cannot mutiny,” he says. “I am the captain, and the _Dutchman—”_

“Must always have a captain,” James finishes, sickened. “Perhaps you did not make your men swear to serve you,” he says, “but I do not think you are so different from Jones as you would like to believe.”

Will drops his gaze and reaches out for the back of the chair nearest him, then sinks into it.

It is not the effect James intended to have, and he feels his anger ebb, though the urgency of his purpose does not dissipate. “Will,” he says, kneeling at the table beside him and resisting the urge to reach in vain for his hand, “forgive me. Now it is I who have gone too far.”

“I dare say you have,” Will agrees, a bitter note in his voice. His gaze flickers blindly around the room and lands on James. “Do you wish you had not said it?”

James swallows. “No.”

Will nods. “I thought as much.”

“You cannot disregard the men so,” James persists. He does not want to cause Will further pain, but neither can he bear to sit by and watch as Will leads them all into folly. “How have you managed it, all these years, keeping a crew without any trust? You certainly cannot manage it any longer.”

“You are a fine one to talk of trust,” Will says, but it seems almost like a reflex; there is no bite in it. He lets out a slow breath. “You ask how I managed it? If I am honest—I do not know. The last years, I hardly see the men anymore. I look at them and speak to them, but they are—they are more ghostly to me than you are.” He tilts his head back. “But it was not always so. It was never so unreal when Elizabeth was there.”

The ship rocks and sways. Will has looked away again, and James studies the planes of his face, drawn and closed and gently lit by the sun. He remembers watching him like this before—long ago in another life. _We will find her,_ he wants to say, but for once it feels too much like a lie to speak the words aloud. “She was a great comfort to you,” he says, and he knows it is not enough.

Will glances to him once more. “Yes,” he says softly. “She was. But of late, I have found that y—” Will breaks off at a knock on the door. “Enter,” he says, standing.

James stands hastily as well, frustrated at the interruption and desperate to know what Will had been about to say—more desperate about that, he realizes with chagrin, than he is about convincing Will of the danger from the crew. He forces himself not to dwell on it, however, as the door opens and Godwin enters.

“Captain,” Godwin says, then stops when he notices James. With what seems like a quite deliberate effort, he looks back to Will. “Captain, Vicar’s spotted the island. Can’t see it from the deck yet, but his eyes are never wrong.”

“We’ve made good time,” Will says. He sounds satisfied, but he hesitates, his eyes flicking between Godwin and James. “Give us the room, please, Godwin. I’ll join you on deck shortly.”

Godwin looks for a moment as if he will protest: he sets his shoulders and opens his mouth with the air of one who has much to say, but all that comes out is, “I’ll wait.” He goes, with a backwards watchful look towards James on his way out.

From the way Will turns to him, James sees that he caught the look as well, but he does not comment on it. “I’ll not ask you to go ashore today. Nor will I go myself. Only Godwin.”

James raises his eyebrows. “You still haven’t explained where we are.”

“No, I haven’t,” says Will shortly, frowning at nothing. He walks to the sunny windows and looks out at what can only be empty, open ocean. “None of the crew know what is here. Godwin does not know either, though I suspect he will guess it if he has not already. I would prefer to keep it that way.”

When Will looks back around, his expression is difficult to read. If it were not so strange, James would think he looked anxious. Almost as if he were asking permission. But it makes no sense, since James already knows they are searching for Elizabeth. He had thought that Will would have already shared that detail with Godwin as well. “Of course,” he says, covering his confusion. “How long will we stay here?”

“Not long at all,” Will replies. “We will weigh anchor well before sundown.” He heads off the misgivings that rise again in James’s mind. “And the next place we make berth,” he says, “will be a port where many ships come and go. Cease your worrying. Any or all of the men may leave then.”

James looks at Will, trying to read what is written on his face—not in his eyes or anywhere so clear to see, but somewhere in the set of his mouth and the way he turns his head. He wants to know whether Will is telling him what he wants to hear, or whether he means it, and the very fact that he has to wonder is painful. “I am glad to hear it,” he says at last, uneasy.

When they both go out on the deck, James several paces behind Will, he sees that the land they are approaching is an island much smaller than the one where Will and Elizabeth had lived. There are trees and hills beyond the sand, and enough of a coast that they must travel slowly along the shore looking for a place to drop anchor, but there are no cliffs, no open grassy spaces. James wants to ask, again, about the significance of this place—but he knows without seeing Will’s face that it would be futile.

Godwin goes down in a boat and strikes out for the island alone. They can follow the boat all the way from the ship to the shore on such a sunny day, and most of the crew linger along the gunwales to watch and wait. James spots one man, however, who turns and seems to be making straight for him—David.

Though James is fond of him, he has no wish to have yet another cryptic conversation, and so he turns and walks quickly around the mast and between the men, then heads belowdeck on a whim. He knows there is nothing for him in the hold, but perhaps David will not follow him there. He passes through the long, low room with its stowed hammocks and eschews the kitchen in favor of the stairs that go deeper into the ship.

Footsteps behind him drive James to duck into an alcove between stacks of barrels, hastily dragging a bundle of spare canvas over himself to hide his unearthly glow. The footsteps pass him by and grow fainter, but stop before they fade away altogether. James feels foolish now, crouching like a child, but he does not want to be discovered in such an absurd position, so he does not yet dare to look out from beneath the canvas. He wonders if it David has even followed him, or if someone else is in the stores by mere chance.

“There you are,” says David’s voice, confirming James’s fears in the worst way—but he does not whip off the canvas, and in any case he sounds to be too far away to see James. “I was beginning to think you were not here after all.”

“And I thought you would not come,” replies someone else, and though they are speaking softly, James is sure that it is Moreno. He supposes that David was not following him after all. “Did you bring what I asked?”

“No. Why did you ask for it? And why did you want to meet now? You could hardly be more mysterious if—”

“It must be now.” Moreno cuts across David, but he does not sound angry, only urgent. “The captain will never let us leave the ship. I do not know what he is chasing, but he is not being honest with the crew.”

“He told us what he is searching for,” David argues. “An end to this damned mist. At the end of the world.”

“But we are not going there,” Moreno insists. James hears the bite of impatience in his voice, the sound of a conversation rehearsed many times. “You were right to doubt. We must leave now, while the shore is near.”

There is a pause. “And this is why you wanted to meet here? To plot our escape?”

“We may have no other chance.”

“The day is too clear. We will be seen if we try to row anywhere.”

Moreno sighs so sharply that James can hear it even with the creaking of the ship about them. “You wanted to leave. You said you would go with me.”

“I know. I know. But that was before—”

“Before you swore that lunatic oath. You know the captain does not care.”

“I have some honor left.” David sounds wounded.

Moreno laughs. It is a startling sound, too bright for the darkness of the hold and the tension in their voices. “You are lying even to yourself now, yes?”

James hears a shocked gasp—but then David is laughing too, and hushing Moreno amid his chuckles. “Enough honor to do the right thing,” he says eventually, his laughter dying away. “I will not slip away like a criminal.”

When Moreno speaks again, his voice is sober once more. “We are going to die on this ship.”

“No,” David protests. “No, this voyage is—it is the only thing that will let us live in peace.”

Huddled beneath his canvas, James frowns. “We could live in peace away from the sea,” Moreno says, echoing the confusion that James feels.

David is silent for a long while. “I cannot think of a way to leave,” he says at last.

“I have done the thinking,” Moreno replies. “It will be simple. And we must go now. You said the men would be glad to stay—I thought so as well, but we both know it is not true. Better to leave now than wait until we are far from land.”

“And where would we go?”

“Anywhere,” Moreno says, and even James can hear the desperation in his voice. “We will have the whole world. Let this strange ship sail to hell, and if it comes back, then the captain has my blessings. But we do not need to go with it.”

Again, there is silence. James strains to hear, thinking that he is missing something, and then their voices reach him—they are speaking, but much more quietly, too soft for James to catch their words. As soundlessly as he can, he moves the canvas aside and stuffs it between the barrels. A glance tells him that David and Moreno, still conversing in hushed tones, are around the next corner. James does not linger where he is, nor creep closer—he feels nearly as intrusive as he did reading Elizabeth’s letter, and he guesses that he will not hear anything more damning than he has already.

Quickly, he steals back up the steps to the lower gun-deck, breathing easier once he hears the noise of the rest of the crew moving around him. But he cannot afford to linger here, and continues up the narrow staircase into the free air.

It takes some searching to find Will, sitting among the nets piled at the prow of the ship as if he is hiding as well. “I need to speak with you,” James says, pitching his voice low, though no one is nearby.

Will does not respond at once. James follows his gaze and sees that he is watching the island, squinting towards the shore as the mist gathers again. Nothing is visible there beyond a slight ruffling in the branches of the trees. Impatient, James looks back to Will and opens his mouth. “I said, I—”

“Yes.” Will turns as if coming out of a dream. “James. What is it?”

The full force of his gaze takes James by surprise. “I have just heard—” He hesitates, struck by his own misgivings, then forges ahead. “I was just below. I heard Moreno saying—he does not think you will let the crew off of the ship. He mistrusts you.”

Will nods. “You told me this earlier.”

“Yes, but I just heard—” God, but it is hard to say; and yet James knows he cannot choose otherwise. He has betrayed too much trust to stop now. “I heard him speaking to David. He is going to try to leave the ship today, before we weigh anchor.” James stops again, horrified by himself, the quick flow of the words.

“Let him go,” Will says. “Let them both go. I wish them luck.”

“But David will not go,” James finishes wretchedly. “He said some things that I did not rightly understand. He spoke of honor, which I took to mean the oath he swore to you—but he spoke also of—well, as I said, I did not understand it.”

Will frowns at him. “What did he say?”

“He said that he—could not live in peace if he did not go with you,” James says. “Or with the _Dutchman,_ I suppose. He spoke of the voyage, not of you. But he cannot know what we are truly looking for—can we?” James falters on the question, looking anxiously at Will.

The sea beyond the bowsprit is now entirely covered in mist—it looks almost as though twilight is falling, such is the contrast to the previously sunny day, though James knows there are hours yet left until night. Will searches the gray haze, the faint outline of the island’s low shape, for long moments before he answers. “I wonder whether he has not reasoned it out,” he says at last, slow and troubled. “I wonder if he does not mean—” The change that comes over Will then is striking, his face suddenly pale in the gloom, his hands clutching nervously at the netting as he gets quickly to his feet.

“What is it?” James demands. “What are you thinking?”

Will is already passing him, but he jerks his head for James to follow. “Come with me.”

“What is it?” James repeats.

“I will tell you, but no one must hear.” Will does not speak again until they reach not his cabin but the balcony at the stern of the ship. It does nothing to soothe James, who cannot help but remember his conversation with David at this spot, not to mention the terrible death-echo that seems to linger in the very timbers. He focuses his mind on Will, the better to shake his fear.

But the expression on Will’s face is not encouraging either. He paces a short patrol between the rails. “Some months ago,” he says, “not long after the mist began to appear, but well before you returned—the _Dutchman_ was drifting. We may as well have been becalmed, we could make so little headway in all of the fog. We knew, though, that we were close to land, and so we sailed cautiously. And then the mist cleared for a day.” Will pauses, glancing about at the mist as it shrouds them in again, and looks nearly pleased to see it. James waits with mounting apprehension. “We found we were dangerously close to some rocks off the coast of New Providence. There were three people on the rocks calling to us. And though the mist was gone, there was a strange black cloud coming ever closer. We did not know what it was.”

James swallows his horror, remembering his own confusion when he first saw the black mist. He can well imagine the ship full of men looking for adventure, not yet frightened of the endless haze; how strange and interesting it must have seemed.

“We realized our mistake,” Will goes on, “when the mist was still some distance from the ship. We heard cries coming from the rocks, and we waited still offshore—and when the mist moved on, there was a man floating in the water. Two others were clinging to the cliffs.”

“Good God,” James cannot help saying.

Will does not look at him. “We took the three of them aboard. It looked as if the first man would die—he slept in a fever dream for a week, saying terrible things. His companions hardly left his side until he woke.”

“They stayed on the _Dutchman_ all that time?” James demands. “Why did you not simply set them ashore in a better place?”

“There was no better place,” Will replies. “The mist returned and cut us off wherever we turned. If we had been in the open ocean, perhaps we might have been able to find a heading, but as it was we could hardly keep ourselves from running aground each night.”

“Then what did you do?” James stares at Will, uncomprehending.

Will shrugs. “The only thing I could think to do. Took the three of them with us until we could find safe harbor. But then I found that only one of them—the man who had been ill—would go ashore.”

Something falls into place in James’s thoughts. “That was Luis,” he guesses, and sees on Will’s face that he is right. “Moreno stayed? Why? And what became of the third man?” But he can already imagine.

“Moreno stayed _because_ of the that third man,” Will explains. “David, of course. Despite what had happened to Luis, he found the—adventure, the possibility of the _Dutchman_ too enticing to resist. Though he no longer finds it so, from all you have told me,” he finishes heavily.

James stares at his own hands, thinking fast. “And that is why he swore that damned oath of loyalty?” he asks. “Because you granted him passage?”

Will nods. “And a place in the crew,” he adds shortly.

It is enough to make James’s head spin, thinking back on all he knows and has heard from David. Not at all the entry to the crew that James would have guessed. And he wonders, almost idly, how well David and Moreno knew one another that day on the rocks. “What does it matter?” he asks, doing his best to return to the issue at hand. “We knew already that Moreno wanted to leave, and that David prefers to stay. Your story only tells me that I ought not to be surprised.”

Will stops his pacing at last and turns to face James. “On the contrary,” he says, “you ought to be as shaken as I am.” And standing in the dim light, in the shadow of the ship, he does look shocked and frightened. “David wishes to stay, yes. But not because of some childish notion of loyalty. I believe—there seems to be no other explanation—David means not to hold himself to his own debt, but to hold me to mine.”

“But you are doing that already,” James protests. “You are letting the crew go ashore—”

Will shakes his head. “Another debt,” he says. “One I incurred when the news of Luis’s death reached this ship. We might have rescued them sooner, you see—and he might have lived. David holds me to account for his death.”

The look on Will’s face is something awful to see, a sickening mix of guilt and pity. Not for himself, James knows. “You did not know what the mist would do,” he says softly.

“No,” Will agrees, “but the three of them—Moreno, Luis, and David—they knew, and they were shouting it to us over the water while the mist approached. We hesitated and—you see.”

James does not see, but he has the sense not to argue the point with Will. “Be that as it may,” he says, “David is speaking madness. What does he expect you to do?”

“He would have me allow him to remain on board,” Will says, speaking each word as if it is dragged from him. “All the way to world’s end. He guesses—well, how much he guesses I cannot say, but enough to know that if we are going to the place the souls are coming from, he may be able to bring one back.”

For a moment, there is no sound but the sea washing against the ship below. Even the sounds of the crew on the main deck fade into nothing. “Bring back Luis?” James manages at last, feeling as if his ears are full of water.

Will nods grimly.

“Madness,” James repeats. He shakes his head. “How does he think to do it?”

“Whatever his plan, it is surely doomed.” Will grips the rail with a white hand. “And yet I cannot tell him no, James. How can I deny him this? If not for me—”

“You put too much blame on yourself,” James cannot help saying. “You did not kill Luis.”

“He died because I was too slow to save him,” Will insists. He looks away from James, out to the clouded sea, but every part of his body is rigid and tense. “David has the right of it.”

Looking at him, hearing his voice, James feels the bite of his own words before— _i do not think you are so different from Jones as you would like to believe_ —and the sting of guilt, for thinking even in the privacy of his mind that Will cared hardly at all for the welfare of the crew. He knows he could hardly have thought differently, given Will’s reckless singlemindedness in the past weeks, and yet the pain he sees now is more natural to him than the bitter, cold creature he has half grown accustomed to. For this is Will—who loved Elizabeth enough to throw his whole life to the wind, who picked flowers on the cliffs above the town, who waited all through the night for James in the dark and lonely smithy.

Of course Will cares. He can hardly do otherwise as long as he draws breath, and James sees the truth of that now. Yet here he is torturing himself needlessly, stopping his own mouth with guilt he need not taste. “But,” James begins, searching for words of sense, “you cannot simply let David do as he pleases. You must know it is folly.”

“I know it.” A bleak note of defeat in his voice. “I did not think it would come to this.”

James suppresses a sigh. “He cannot stay on this ship, Will. It is far too dangerous.”

Will turns back to James, his face twisted. “What am I to tell him? That he cannot risk his life to help the—” He falters, and James sees him swallow. “The person he loves?”

“You cannot tell him nothing,” James argues. “We are going to world’s end—the land of the dead, as he has rightly guessed. But we may not come back. He must—he ought not to—” James stops, words failing him. In the silence that ensues, he hears his own thoughts like an echo what he has just said: _we may not come back._ It is the first time either of them has said it aloud, and he can see that Will does not disagree. The hardness flickers in his eyes, the same determination that so frightened James when he first came aboard.

As James watches, that grim expression shifts ever so slightly, becomes marginally less hopeless. “Good God,” Will says, and rubs a hand across his face. “No,” he says softly, “David cannot come. He must live.”

Relief washes over James like a sun-warmed wave. “He and Moreno both,” he adds.

“However they can,” Will agrees. His eyes are on James, and his lips press together. “I will speak with David,” he says abruptly. “This very moment.”

With barely a thought, James says, “No.” He nearly flinches, expecting a sharp response at his own impertinence—but though Will looks surprised, he waits. “Perhaps not,” James continues, more gently. “Perhaps I ought to speak to him instead. You know—you know he will not want to hear it from you.”

Will looks at James with frustration. Stubborn, his mouth set, and in pain still. “This is my doing,” he says. “I ought to set right what I can.”

“But he will not listen,” James repeats. He makes his voice as soft as he can. “You may simply drive him into further danger, whereas I—I am at worst a stranger to him, at best—” He stops. He does not want to admit to Will that whatever trust David has in him stems from the clear divide between himself and Will. “I think he may hear what I say,” he finishes lamely.

It is difficult to say whether Will thinks the same, but at any rate he sees the truth of the matter: that David will disbelieve any warnings that come from Will. “Do what you can,” he says, “please.”

 _Of course,_ James wants to tell him, dismayed by the sudden desperation in his tone and the guilt still etched on his face. He wants to tell Will that he would do anything he asked, would sail to world’s end alone if it would help—but Will is already turning away, one hand to his face, bent against the rail like an old man. He leaves without speaking.

He does not know where David is, but he doubts very much that he is still below—a long absence would be missed in such close quarters as this. Casting an eye about as he returns to the main deck, he sees Moreno at the gunwale, rapping the wood with his knuckles and exchanging words with the bosun. No danger of catching them still together, then, at any rate. James cannot see David on the poop or forecastle, however, so he turns again to the steps that lead belowdeck.

No sooner has he placed his foot on the first stair, however, than David appears at the bottom of the steps, his face cast in shadow. He marches up the steps as if he does not see James, and James, taken aback, steps aside for him to pass. Then he realizes that David intends to ignore him and walk away. “I want to speak with you,” James says as he passes.

David does not stop. “I am done speaking with you,” he says, not even turning his head, wending his way around barrels and rigging but apparently still aware that James is following. “I no longer need your help.”

The hard decisiveness in his voice drives James to recklessness. “I know what you are planning,” he says, the words bursting out of him.

David pauses, his back straight and his shoulders stiff. Then he turns, a mask-like look on his face. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“And I know what Moreno is planning,” James adds, feeling certain that he is being unwise but unable to think of anything else to say.

It works—at the least, a flicker of something passes behind the mask, and David’s mouth tightens. “Come with me,” he says, brushing past James again and leading him back belowdeck.

James follows, recognizing uncomfortably that they are heading for the same out-of-the-way corner of the hold where he eavesdropped earlier. The irony is more disheartening than amusing. As he goes, he does his best to come up with something more reliable to say than the half-connected thoughts chasing themselves through his mind, but nothing much comes of it. He wonders if he ought not to have let Will speak to David himself, after all.

Unexpectedly, David turns around to face James. Before he can speak, James rushes to say, “We will be making berth in the next port we reach after this island. None of the crew will be asked to stay after that.”

As James knew he would, David interrupts at once. “I will not be going ashore,” he says. “I will stay. If you had spoken to the captain as I asked—”

“I did speak to the captain,” James replies. “He told me. I know what you are planning to do.” Defiance sparks in David’s eyes. “And I know why,” James finishes, his breath caught in his throat.

The spark turns to a blaze. “You know nothing,” David retorts. He looks and sounds furious—but perhaps because he has become so attuned to the truths and falsehoods of Will’s mind, James thinks he can sense fear there as well. In fact, the closer he looks, the more he sees. A tension in David’s frame that James first took to be readying for a fight, but which may well be a readiness to flee. His skin pale in the ghostly light. A tremor to his hands where they flit between his pockets and the empty air.

James finds himself moved, not to pity but to admiration. For David’s courage, and for his devotion. There is no small amount of shame in the thought. “You cannot bring Luis back,” he forces himself to say. It comes out more harshly than he had intended, but David does not reply. He seems shocked into silence—whether by James’s tone or by the revelation that he truly does know what David intends. James is glad not to be rebuffed again, but he does not like the look of wide-eyed surprise any better than the anger. “What do you know about it?” James asks, softening his voice. “What do you think to do?”

“I must do something,” David says, and to James’s horror his voice sounds near to tears, though his eyes are dry and clear.

“Luis is dead,” James says, cruel though he knows it is, and sees David flinch in response. “But you are alive. Let him go—let all of this go”—James gestures at the ship about them, and the mist out in the air beyond it—“and be happy somewhere.” _Anywhere,_ he thinks, as desperate as David himself.

David shakes his head. “I cannot. Not when he—” He cuts himself off, and starts again. “Not when I can help him.”

James does not think he is talking about Luis, and he wonders whether David has noticed the slip. “We are going to the end of the world,” he says, trying to reach him: if he could he would take his hands, consequences be damned. Perhaps then he would listen. “Do you know what that means? The land of the dead. We may not come back.”

David is staring at him. In the dark beneath the ship his gaze is hard to read—but James understands with a terrible, sinking weight that he is neither shocked nor frightened. He is standing very still, his breath even. He knows what he is risking, and he would go anyways. “No,” James says, nearly a gasp, appalled. “What are you doing?” he demands.

“The only thing I can do,” David says, the motion of his shrug barely visible. “A life for a life.” His voice is wooden and dead.

James has to struggle to understand it, his admiration turned bitter and dark. The ultimate sacrifice—one that James made himself, but he guesses there will be no chance of success for David, no redemption in his fate. And no second chance. “But,” James says, and flounders for any words that will not ring false and drive him further away. He does not think he could bear it if David followed Will and himself into the hell where their path will surely lead. And he does not like admitting it, even to himself—that he sees no way out or back from this. But David is—young, and alive, and in love with someone who is also young and alive. God, James could weep for him. “But Moreno loves you,” he says; the words are dry as dust in his mouth.

There is a moment of silence, and the sea rushes deep and loud against the hull and all about them. James wonders whether David will try in vain to hit him, or if he will beg and plead. He does not know which would be worse. “Moreno is my friend,” David says at last. It is a bad lie; he sounds half-strangled.

“I know,” James replies, as gently as he can. “I know you want to protect him. You are a—a better man than I was in my life. I know you would do anything you can to spare him pain.”

“What do you know of it?” David asks, softly now, as if he is afraid of the answer. “You are afraid of the captain. You do not even know where he is going, and you carry his messages, but you will not demand anything of him. Not even the truth. I know you are as curious as the rest of us.”

The sudden attack startles James into honesty. “I can demand nothing of him anymore,” he says. “He knows me too well. We were friends once, as I told you before—as you and Moreno are.”

It is as open as he dares to be, his last frantic effort for comprehension. He does not care, truly, what David takes from his words, so long as he understands that James wants nothing but to help him. And then, miraculously, something appears on David’s face that is neither suspicion nor despair nor anger. The faintest of smiles, along with a bleak huff of breath that might be a laugh. “Then you must know how it is,” he says. “You must understand, after all. Luis was everything to him. There is n—”

 _“You_ are everything to him,” James insists. “Do not simply cast that aside!”

David shakes his head. “There is _nothing_ I would not do for him,” he finishes heatedly. “He is grieving, he is lost, but if I can simply—if I can bring Luis back—”

“But you cannot!” It takes effort to keep from shouting. “David, you must listen to me.” James wants to take hold of him, to shake him, and he puts all of his urgency into his voice instead of his hands. _“You cannot._ I do not know what we will find at the end of the world, but I can promise you that there is nothing beyond it. There is nothing from which to return, nothing that you can bring back. Do you understand me?”

“But you are here,” David protests.

“That is something else entirely,” James replies, thinking with an echo of terror on Calypso’s words: _They are called by discontent, a longing. It draws them, the lost, back from beyond._ “I was not summoned, or—or bargained for. And when I was dead, there was—” It is as if the memory stops his voice. Salt in his mouth and lungs, the world made of green water above and below.

David’s voice breaks the silence, and he sounds— “What?”

He sounds frightened, James realizes. “There was nothing,” James tells him, his voice as raw as if he had coughed up a lungful of brine again. “Nothing until I was floating in the water. When I was gone, I was not anywhere else.”

“I understand you,” David says in a near-whisper.

James is not so foolish as to mistake that for acquiesence. “There is nothing for you where we are going,” he repeats. “Do not throw your life—all it could be, think on that, all you could have—do not throw it away.”

David breathes in, slow, steady. “I take your meaning. But if I do not go—”

“The captain will not hold you to your oath,” James says swiftly.

“I know,” David says, a startling trace of amusement in his voice. But then it is gone: “If I do not go, I—I will not be able to rest. Knowing I have not done all I could have, no matter what it would mean.”

He truly is the better man, James thinks again, not so much a realization as a sigh of relief in spite of himself. The terrible thing is that David in all his goodness deserves to go with the _Dutchman_ almost as much as he deserves to live a long life far away from the sea—and James, heartbroken and, yes, envious, half wants to give him the chance. If only so that he might redeem himself in his own eyes, though he needs it far less than James did. Better by far: no, it is as Will said. He must live.

“Let me do what I can,” James offers, hardly knowing where the words are coming from. “I am bound to go to world’s end. Let me go in your place—and do what I can to bring Luis back.” He hears himself and knows it is all still in vain; yet he holds David’s gaze, hoping.

David returns it watchfully. “What can you do that I could not?”

“I do not know,” James admits. “But—I am already dead. There is nothing left for me beyond this journey. Let me—let me spare you the sorrow.” Or at the least, James thinks, such sorrow as has not been felt already. More words want to tumble out of him, but he swallows them down.

David, ever wary, considers a moment before he speaks. “Why would you do that for me?” he asks at last.

“Have you not been listening?” James asks, honestly wondering, and the corner of David’s mouth twitches. “I suppose I want—if such a thing is possible—to give you what I did not have. What I was too blind to want.” He smiles, and it is not entirely forced. “Unfinished business, if you like.”

To James’s surprise, David nods. “Give me your word.”

James wonders how much his word is worth these days. Nevertheless, he is happy to give it. “I swear I will do whatever is in my power to bring him back,” he says. He is fairly sure there will be nothing he can do—he has not lied to David about this. But who knows: perhaps there will be some miracle beyond the edge of the world. Perhaps it will be Elizabeth after all, standing on a shore with Luis, waiting for them.

There seems to be a new calmness in David’s eyes as he regards James, who himself does not feel any consolation from his oath. “Thank you,” David says, and James cannot be sure, but he thinks there is a tremor in his voice.

“Good fortune to you,” James returns, feeling strangely as if they are saying farewell already. Perhaps they are, in a way. He doubts they will speak of this again to one another.

As if he has the same doubt, David lingers. He opens his mouth to speak, and when he does, the words are hesitant. “When you say you are—bound,” he begins, but seems not to know how to continue.

“I was a part of the _Dutchman’s_ crew when I died,” James tells him. “And one who is part of the crew is part of the ship. Where she goes, I go.”

Another small smile on David’s face, this one more unhappy than all the others that have gone before it. “And if you were not bound to the ship?”

James knows what he is asking. “I would go with her captain,” he admits, “as far as the fates suffered me to go.” There can be no harm in speaking that truth here—where no one will hear it but David, who understands this and more beside.

“When you were alive,” David says, and falters. “Were you hap—”

A shout goes up above them, loud even through the thick planks of wood, cutting off David’s words. He looks quickly upward, and James follows suit: the shout is followed by the sound of many running feet. The two of them exchange a glance, then hasten together back up the narrow staircase toward the main deck, James on David’s heels.

By the time James steps off of the stairs, most of the crew is gathering along the gunwale. David is among them, leaving James apparently forgotten. James tries to see what they are looking at, but the crowd of men blocks his sight. He hurries up to the forecastle near the ropes where he found Will earlier, the better to see despite the ever-thickening mist. From here he can tell what has caused the commotion: from the direction of the island comes Godwin’s boat, with Godwin rowing, some dark bulky thing between the thwarts in front of him. True to what Will intended, the rest of the crew seem to know as little about it as James does from what he can hear of their muttering. A flame of curiosity jumps within him.

Below in the boat, Godwin rows alongside the ship and takes hold of the ladder that the men have dropped. James cranes his neck and watches as he swings the thing—something in a sack—over his shoulder. It looks heavy. A weight drops into the pit of James’s stomach, though he cannot think why it should. He watches with the men as Godwin comes aboard. With the rushing sea and the muttering of the crew and the calls of the men hauling the boat up after, James cannot hear what Godwin says to the man who helps him over the gunwale, but he marks Godwin’s quick shake of his head and the man’s darkening frown. Without saying anything else, Godwin shoulders his way through the crew, towards Will’s cabin.

James hesitates a moment, on the verge of following but thinking better of it. Or more precisely: attempting to think better of it. Whatever this island holds, Will plainly wishes to keep it a secret from James. He has a right to that secret, James knows. Yet he has a need to speak to Will that goes beyond any prying, jealous curiosity. James must tell him of his conversation with David—he must tell him that it will be all right, that he need not blame himself for anything else. He thinks of the ruined, aged look on Will’s face and squares his shoulders.

As he suspected it would be, Will’s cabin door is shut and Godwin behind it by the time James picks his way through the press of the crew. He guesses Will must have left his place at the prow as well, for he hears voices from inside the cabin. He stands staring at the door, wondering whether it would truly be better to knock now or wait. Which would Will prefer, and which will hurt him the least?

The door opens before James has time to knock or turn away. It swings inward, revealing Godwin on his way out—and behind him, lit better by the lantern than by the weak daylight, stands Will at the table. The sack is now empty and hanging carelessly over the back of the chair. And sitting on the table, with dark earth still crusted in the carvings, is an ornate black chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on this one and for how bloated it got :) I call it "four separate conversations and three times James went _oh, fuck."_
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3


	8. Between Wind and Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Between wind and water: at a vulnerable part of some process, or the part of a ship’s hull that is exposed by rolling or fluctuation in the water surface.

The sense of shock at the sight of the chest is such that James feels, for the briefest moment, a thudding and rushing inside of him as if his heart is pounding. It dulls away then to the ever-present roar of the sea and wind, but James stays where he is. The feeling of—he does not know what it is, something both hot and cold—the feeling roots him to the deck like a fourth mast.

He tears his gaze from the chest and finds Will watching him intently and Godwin glancing between the two of them. James clears his throat, but Will speaks first. “You may as well come in,” he says.

Godwin steps aside so James can pass. Inside the cabin, James shivers again with that revulsion which he has not felt since he first arrived on board, when every plank of wood on the ship spoke only of Davy Jones. Before he began to associate Will with this darkness, and it became sad rather than hated. But now the shapes of the organ and the hanging lantern, even the small windows at the stern side, are sinister. The chest looms black on its table.

“You know the heading,” Will says, a dismissal in his tone.

“I do,” Godwin agrees, but pauses with his hand still on the door. “Captain, I—”

“Leave us,” Will says tersely.

“Captain Turner.”

James is watching the chest, but he turns around to look at Godwin. He has never spoken directly to the man, nor has Godwin spoken to him, but from his observation he seems to be the perfect first mate: knowledgeable and dutiful, and well-liked by the crew. Far better-liked than Will, in fact. James has never seen him disobey a direct order before, and he is surprised to see that Godwin has not moved at all.

“Have you forgotten the bearings already?” Will asks from behind James. James cannot see his face, but he knows that deceptively mild tone well enough to feel uneasy.

“I dug up that chest because you asked it of me,” Godwin says, gazing at Will over James’s shoulder. “I’ll be leaving with the crew because you asked that of me as well. And you’ve told me naught of what you intend—”

“Then do not speak of what you do not understand.” Will’s voice is hard and flat.

“You’ve told me naught,” Godwin repeats, “but I suspect you don’t think to return. Is that the right of it?”

Stony silence greets the question. James is not surprised—and by the expression on Godwin’s face, neither is he. But still he does not leave: his gaze goes to James, who does not want to answer by word or gesture. He does not want to lie to Godwin, but he cannot stomach telling him the truth any more than he could bear to break David’s heart.

Godwin sighs. “I’m no fool, Captain. Don’t open that chest.” He hesitates a moment longer and then goes at last, shutting the door firmly behind him.

James turns back to Will and finds him standing with his arms crossed, staring at the door where Godwin has vanished. Then, with what appears to James to be a massive effort, he looks away and back to the chest. He looks on it with an expression that James cannot read—and he is afraid to try.

But then Will reaches out a hand to touch the tarnished metal. The sight brings back James’s shock in full force, and he finds it has turned into anger, fire in his lungs and ice in the tips of his fingers. “What is this?” he demands. He can hardly get the words out.

“Hold your tongue,” Will snaps.

“I will not,” James says, and to his own surprise his voice is shaking. “What is this?”

Will turns back to face him, that same indecipherable look in his eyes. He is not a stranger—never that—but in this moment he looks to James as he did in this same cabin weeks and weeks ago, lost and in pain and nearly out of reach. James cannot help thinking of what he said then—that even he did not know what would happen if he were to stab his heart himself. But James remembers the distant, nearly studious tone. _There is a certain… curiosity, I must admit. And I am tired._ He looks neither curious nor tired now, but almost—wary.

James swallows. “What are you planning to do with that?” he asks, as calmly as he is able.

“I simply want to keep it with me,” Will replies. James’s disbelief must show on his face, for Will continues, “There is no need to look so frightened. No harm can come to it—the chest is not even open.”

Despite the obvious truth of this, James feels no calmer. “Where is the key?” he asks. Will does not answer—of course not—and his eyes do not even stray from James, betraying nothing. “Be careful, Will.” It bursts out of him, his worry so strong he must force himself not to take a step closer. He does not know what he means—be careful of the crew, be careful of yourself—perhaps both at once.

Will’s mouth twitches with a smile. “I am being careful.”

“Is that what you call this?”

“Listen to me.” The smile vanishes, and it is Will who comes closer now. “I know what is troubling you, and I am saying that you have no cause to worry. We are going to the end of the world, remember. I simply think it prudent to bring along—insurance.”

James stares at him. “Insurance against what?”

“Well,” Will explains, sounding as if he is choosing each word with care, “suppose that we do not find Elizabeth. Perhaps we cannot reach her, or she is not there—whatever the reason, perhaps she cannot help us clear the mist and put all these souls to rest. Who can tell what bargains will be needed to finish this?” At James’s blank gaze, he gestures again to the chest. “I am the captain of the _Dutchman,_ and that chest is all I have to offer.”

“Offer?” James repeats. “Offer to whom?”

“Whomever,” Will replies dismissively. “Calypso, perhaps. Some more powerful god or goddess, I know not. But this is the only eventuality for which I can plan in any way.”

God above, he is as mad as David, James thinks. Will is waiting for him to speak. “You must think me simple,” James says. “You cannot bargain with death.”

“You did,” Will points out. “When you brought Jones’s heart to Beckett.”

It is so casual, so cruel—and above all, so true—that James is stunned speechless. He flounders for a moment. The old excuses run through his mind, familiar and oft-repeated to himself: there was no other way to bring Jones to heel, anyone with sense would have done the same, I had no way of knowing what it would come to. All lies, of course, and no more meaningful now for how sweet they once sounded.

At James’s silence, Will seems satisfied. He turns away and reaches for the chest again—and puts it back in the sack in which Godwin brought it. “I needn’t ask you to tell no one about this,” Will says with his back to James. “Not that it matters—the crew will leave soon enough.” And then his shoulders stiffen. “I take it you spoke to David?”

It seems the appearance of the chest had driven that concern from Will’s mind, just as it did for James. Now, however, their conversation comes back in full force. “I did,” he confirms.

Will turns around once more, that same mixture of guilt and fear in his eyes. “And?”

James hesitates. “We were interrupted when Godwin returned,” he says. He watches Will’s face fall, and sees how he tries to conceal it. Despite the anger he still feels at the sight of the chest and Will’s denial, which has in no way abated, he hates to see his pain. “I think he took my meaning,” James tells him. “I cannot say what he thinks, but—I did what I could.”

Will nods. There is a strange, open look on his face, startling after so much tension—a fragility that James is unused to. But it is, in the end, familiar. James remembers it from those long whispered nights in the smithy, from moonlit walks along the beach, from the thousand moments they have shared.

And he can hardly bear to see it now, after so many hard words have gone between them and the openness does not mean what it once did. “I think it likely he will go ashore with the others,” James says. “He is no fool.”

“No,” Will agrees, “simply desperate.”

James can hardly avoid taking his meaning, given what they have just been discussing: who can tell what a desperate man will do? His concern deepens for Will and David both. “We could always stuff him in a barrel and roll him down the gangplank,” James suggests, forcing levity into his voice that does not fit there.

Though he still looks unhappy, Will gives a small huff of laughter. “I suspect he would find a way to kill you a second time if you were to attempt it.”

“Most likely.” James watches him, doing his best to conceal his own anxiety. He is far from satisfied with Will’s answers about the chest, and yet—and yet he wants so badly to believe him, to think of the chest as a hopeful collateral, rather than—he is afraid to even think it. So he swallows down, again, the words he wants to speak, all the accusations and pleas. Will has the right of it, after all: James can hardly accuse him of making a foolish bargain, given all he himself has done. And that seems to be his plight wherever he turns, James thinks, watching Will stow the sack with the chest out of sight. He cannot escape all the ill choices he has made, nor can he atone for them a second time. He cannot touch anything living or see anything beyond the mists.

—

The _Dutchman_ sails through the night and the next two days across an empty, silver-fogged sea. Though the entire crew is aware that they are sailing for a final port, the mood aboard the ship is tense rather than hopeful. James cannot blame them. They have waited for weeks to disembark, with many disappointments already. He suspects they will not relax until they drop anchor.

He notes, however, that Will remains in his cabin for most of each day. James cannot tell if he is steering clear of the crew or is otherwise occupied, but he thinks it is probably for the best. He himself avoids most of the men, as well, but they are back to regarding even him with distrust.

On the morning of the third day, land appears again in the distance. It is Simmons who first spots the coast, calling over the deck at the faint line on the horizon, and the last man on the dawn watch rushes below to rouse the rest of the crew. James stays where he is, leaning against the gunwale along the port side, and unfortunately he is still there when Simmons turns from his place at the prow and sees him. His eyes narrow. “You’ll not be going ashore with us, I trust.”

“Don’t trouble yourself about it,” James replies, resisting the urge to smile in spite of himself: that will only make Simmons more unpleasant. “I’m staying on the ship.”

“Good,” Simmons says shortly. Privately, James agrees with him. He may not know where he stands with Will, but it would be a different sort of hell to haunt the world without him. “And will the ship be coming back?”

James blinks. “Coming back?”

“From world’s end,” Simmons repeats with more than a hint of disdain. “Once you and the captain have done whatever you’re doing, and set the souls to rights. What then?”

Simmons’s gaze is difficult to read, not least because James has avoided looking  at him or talking to him at any time since the Isla de Muerta. But with his eyes still narrowed, James cannot tell whether he truly cares about the ship or if he is simply trying to ferret out more secrets to which he has no right. He suspects the latter. “I have no idea,” he says honestly.

Simmons regards him closely. “There’ll still be souls needing ferrying.”

“I suppose so,” James allows.

“So it’d be the captain taking that job, wouldn’t it?”

Hidden beneath the rough, nearly aggressive tone that seems to be Simmons’s habit, James detects an edge of something else—he cannot immediately place it. “Most likely,” James replies. He tries not to think too hard about whether or not he considers it a lie.

“Any idea where he’ll make port?”

“I won’t be around to know about that, will I?” James says sharply, his frustration finally getting the better of him.

Simmons bristles. “I know the captain talks to you,” he says, stepping closer as if in preparation to fight. “It’s clear to me that he says more to you than he does to the rest of the crew, even Godwin. So if anyone knows, you do.”

“I’ve just said,” James snaps, matching Simmons’s tone, “that I do not know. And I told you before that he does not tell me anything.”

“You’re lying.” Simmons hurls the accusation at him.

As he does, James identifies that strange edge in his voice. It is fear, or something close to it. Desperation at the least. “No,” James replies, more suspicious than before. “I do not know what he intends.” _And if I did,_ he thinks, _I would not betray him to you._ He raises his chin at Simmons’s disbelieving look. “Surely you have crewed this ship long enough to know that no one can say what the captain will do.”

“I’ve been here long enough for that, aye,” Simmons agrees begrudgingly. “And yet there’s never been one such as you aboard.”

“One such as me?”

Simmons glares at him. “A ghost that speaks. And you said before that the two of you have a history. There’s never been anyone who knows the captain, either.”

And that, James supposes, makes him a likely source of information in Simmons’s eyes. David has said as much to him many times. How unfortunate for them both that all of the history turned to dust long ago. “If you are looking to join this crew again,” James says, “then I suggest you go back to Tortuga.” He can see by the look on Simmons’s face that he has guessed right. “Though why you would want to crew the _Dutchman_ is beyond me,” he cannot resist adding in his bitterness. “Were you not the first to protest this voyage?”

Simmons’s lip curls. “I’d expect a great many things are beyond you,” he snarls, “if you can’t see it. Of course, you being a Navy man, it’s no wonder.” His voice turns sneering. “Dutiful to the last drop, whatever you pretend.”

He takes his leave then, stalking off into the swarm of men now working at the rigging. A glance at the horizon confirms that they are indeed approaching the coast. Yet most of the relief from that knowledge is tainted for James by Simmons’s parting remark. He is not so feeble as to think that Simmons truly knows anything of his past, let alone the past between Will and himself, but nevertheless—the accusations are too close for comfort.

To distract himself, James squints towards the land in the distance. He has not seen any maps, but he guesses they are somewhere in the northern islands, possibly near Tortuga after all. They are still too far away for any ports or towns to be visible, however, and the mist obscures much of the coast besides. The most that James can say is that, wherever they are, it is better than more of the endless open ocean: better for the crew, at any rate. He is not sure he can say the same for himself and Will.

As they draw nearer the coast in the following hours, the _Dutchman_ angles eastward, guided by whatever heading Will and Godwin have devised. Still, there is no sign of civilization on the shore, even as the noon hour comes and goes. James begins to wonder whether this is not simply another island on which to look for Elizabeth, or another item as cursed as the chest in Will’s cabin—and at the thought of the chest, James’s spirits sink still further.

“Heave to!” Godwin calls, sending the men into a new flurry of motion. James turns quickly to look between him and the land, which is nearer than before, but still too distant to drop anchor. He cannot think why they would stop, particularly when all that can be seen is the wide horizon and a barren spit of the island jutting out from the larger mass. But the men do not disobey, and slowly, with much creaking wood and hissing rope, the _Dutchman_ slows to a halt.

James spots Will emerging from his cabin, and waits with a mixture of relief and apprehension. He suspects that Will means to address the crew, and is glad of it—but he is not sure they will like what he has to say. From the faces of the men nearest to him, they are of a like mind.

 Will takes up a position on the quarter-deck, where he can see the crew and they him. “You’ve been a patient lot these past weeks,” he says, and the day is so quiet now that his voice carries without the need to shout. “You’ve done hard work with little thanks, and with less of the truth than is fair. I’ll not deny that.”

James squints up at him, dark against the gray-pearled sky, but cannot make out his expression. His voice is pitched to be heard, and his words are frank and true, but it is beyond James to know how deeply he feels what he is saying.

“It’s high time I rewarded your patience,” Will continues. “You know where we are, all of you. Jean-Rabel is waiting for you beyond those trees. We’ll sail no closer to the shore today, but the boats will bear you safely to land. Make the usual preparations, and then you have leave to cut loose. Do what you will with the boats once you reach the shore.” Will pauses briefly. “The very best of luck to you all.”

He turns and walks back down the stairs, leaving the quarter-deck empty except for Godwin, who claps his hands once and shouts, “You heard him, boys!”

James, taken aback by the abrupt end to the speech, stands at a loss for a moment, but the crew springs into action around him at once. The men begin to talk with an almost boyish excitement, and they busy themselves securing the rigging and nets on the deck. It is odd, James reflects, to see them making these preparations—such as might be done before leaving a ship empty for some time—so far from shore, and with himself and Will remaining aboard. Yet he supposes it is for the best, for he and Will can hardly maintain the entire vessel on their own. With any luck, they will not be aboard themselves for long.

It takes no more than an hour before the men have begun to lower the boats and descend down the ladders into them, most with no backward glances. James watches them go. He feels no sorrow at their leaving—they have had a less than happy existence together, and he has never been more sentimental than he can help—but it is strange to feel the ship emptying around him. He can feel her riding higher in the water.

There are two boats left, and just over a dozen men on board, when James spots Will at the gunwale. How long he has been there, James does not know: not long, surely, given how reluctant he has been to join the crew. In fact, James wonders whether he will continue his recent tendency toward isolation—more pronounced in the past days than in all the weeks since James came aboard the _Dutchman_ —even after the crew has left. But, James thinks doggedly, he is on deck now, even if it is already mostly empty. He joins Will at the rail.

Will speaks without turning. “I confess, this is going better than I expected.”

“Did you think more of them would fight to remain on the ship?” James asks, bewildered. “Most of them have been trying to leave for months.”

“Not that.” There is a hint of a smile in Will’s voice. “I thought they might simply try to fight me. Even having been given what they want, some men will hold grudges.”

James considers this. “Perhaps they think you are facing worse than whatever they could do to you.”

Will laughs. “You may be right.” He turns now to smile at James. “And what of the speech? Do you think it helped their mood at all?”

With something akin to pain, James realizes he is unused to the sight of Will smiling at him. “I couldn’t say,” he replies.

“Don’t, then,” Will responds easily. He seems—nearly happy, for some reason. There is still the usual tension in his demeanor, but its edges are blunted in his voice and face. James cannot think why he should feel this way on the verge of such a voyage. Whatever the cause, it must be powerful indeed to soften his manner so toward James. “I was never one for talking to my crew,” Will continues, heedless. “But Elizabeth had a gift for that. She could—fire them up, get them to work, calm them when they were angry. I’ve never seen anything like it. I tended to simply ask her to make any necessary addresses to both of our crews.”

James nods uneasily. He does not know how to respond—not least because Will is speaking of Elizabeth in the same light tone as everything else.

“I expect you were better at command than I am,” Will muses. He is gazing at the last boat, now being lowered slowly to the water.

“I am not so sure,” James says quickly.

“Come, now. All of that ambition had to be good for something.”

James pauses with his mouth open. He feels as wounded as he did when Will mentioned his betrayal and deal with Beckett, and he knows that the feeling is as unwarranted now as it was then. Nevertheless, it leaves him with a shock as if he has been slapped. Worse, he knows it is his own guilt that causes him to feel thus, more than any malice on Will’s part. It is no slander for anyone to say that James was ambitious: he was, and made no secret of it. But from Will, knowing the pain James has caused him because of that ambition—it is a blow. James closes his mouth and swallows hard.

Glancing over, however, he sees that Will is once again paying him no mind. His eyes are fixed instead with a singular intensity on that final boat, which has filled with men. As the two of them watch, one of the men pushes the boat away from the _Dutchman’s_ side with an oar. Rocking slightly in sudden rough waves, they steady the small craft and then begin to row for the far-off shore.

James looks more closely and sees what it is that has caught Will’s attention. The man working the second set of oars is Moreno, and seated among the others is David. They are sitting with several men between them, and they do not look at one another, but James has had too many secrets to think that the distance signifies anything. It is a strange sensation, watching from above as they row slowly away. James does not know either of them—he does not pretend to—and yet the weaker, more guilt-ridden part of himself aches for them. A sweet and stinging ache, balm on a wound. Perhaps they will take a ship from Jean-Rabel and sail back to Spain, or England, or somewhere else entirely. Perhaps they will leave the sea and—

Will’s voice interrupts his thoughts. “Thank you for speaking to David on my behalf.”

From the fervent undercurrent to his words, James guesses that Will’s thoughts are similar to his own. “I could not have lived with myself had I not,” he says, and every word is the truth.

Will does not question it, but when James looks over to him, he is frowning. Before James can say another word, however, Will says, “Are you ready? There is little reason to delay further.”

James blinks. “Are we going to swim to world’s end after all?”

“We will sail there,” Will says.

“How?”

“I told you before—”

“You told me that the sea has a current at world’s end, but we are not there yet. How do you expect to sail with no crew?”

Will turns around to lean against the gunwale, his back to the departing boat. “It is true, we needed a crew when we sailed there to find Jack and the _Pearl._ But you forget that we are on the _Dutchman_ now. Look at her.”

James turns as well, disbelieving and slightly exasperated—as if he could forget for a moment that this is the ship upon which he died—and looks about the deck as Will bid him do. Everything is tied down and stowed—all but the sails, which flutter without catching the wind. “What do you intend to do,” he says, “drift until the wind takes us, and then hope that it carries us where we wish to go?”

“We will drift, yes,” Will agrees. “But with the wind, we need only take a straight course. The ship will do the rest.” He must see on James’s face that he does not understand. “The _Dutchman_ is made to ferry souls—and so she can reach beyond world’s end without the trouble it takes all other ships. There is no danger of wrecking her on the falls, because there is no need to journey to the farthest gate as we did before. Any horizon will do.”

Holding his gaze, James can see that he is earnest and confident. Yet he cannot help feeling uneasy when he thinks back on all the claims Will has made so far: that Calypso will help, that they will find Elizabeth, even that David would listen to him. He turns away, back to the sea, so that Will will not see his doubt on his face. Instead, he scans the mist-shrouded place where the horizon ought to be. True enough, they are drifting, the prow swinging slowly to the open ocean. And there is a wind, which could conceivably take them—where? After every horizon, James is well aware, lies another, and another. Whatever fantasies he may once have had of an endless open horizon faded long ago.

But he cannot bear to say this to Will, not with the crew just gone and the air newly clouded between them. Like a second ghost, the chest seems to rest menacingly in its hiding place, threatening even though James has not seen it since it was brought aboard. No, he will not push back further against this plan, mad as it is. If Will’s words come to pass, then it will be for the best, and if not—whatever follows will likely be painful enough.

The silence stretches thin. James steals a glance sideways and sees that Will is alternating between gazing fruitlessly into the mist and picking at the wood of the gunwale. “What did you do, all those years?” James asks, fearful that he will retreat once more into his solitude. “Was it simply the same route for ten years at a time?”

Will’s gaze flicks to him in faint surprise. “For the greater part, yes,” he admits. “There are always souls to ferry. But we stopped in different ports depending on the crew. And Elizabeth sailed with me often.”

The old wound stings again. “You have mentioned that before,” James recalls. “Yet she had her own ship, you said.”

“Aye,” Will nods, “she captained the _Red Dawn_ for nigh on forty years.” At James’s frown, he adds, “The last twenty she spent between the _Dutchman_ and our island. She’d given up her place in the court, and she said she wanted a—a quiet life.” He smiles. “Though it was never particularly quiet.”

James chuckles. “I can believe that.” But he sobers quickly, thinking back over Will’s words. _The last twenty years._ His mind returns to the letter he read in their ruined house, and the painting he found of an Elizabeth he had never seen. He opens his mouth without knowing what he wishes to say. “Was it…?” Every question he might ask feels too much an intrusion, and James is torn between wanting to know—wanting to hear each story as if it will bring him back to life—and wishing nothing more than to spare them both the grief that comes with remembering. “It must have been wonderful,” he says at last.

Will looks out to sea. “It was,” he agrees. He is silent for a moment longer, and then—“You know, I once asked her whether she regretted any of it. Going on the account, becoming king, all the rest.”

From all of James’s memories of Elizabeth, he can guess at the response to such a question. “Was she very angry with you for asking?”

“She laughed.” Will laughs himself, slightly. “I do not know what made me ask—simple wistfulness, perhaps. But she assured me she had no regrets.” He sighs. “If she had doubts, she never told them to me.”

James hesitates. For his part, he would give most anything to have no regrets—and he wonders whether a similar sensation is what has put this new look of desolation on Will’s face. In any case, he hardly feels he can be of any comfort, and yet he cannot say nothing. “I am sure,” he says carefully, “that she hid no secret remorse from you.”

Will falls silent again, and James considers whether it might not be better to take his leave. He ought to have known better—to speak so familiarly to Will, and on the subject of Elizabeth, when it is abundantly clear that James himself knows little enough of their life together. He ought to have held his tongue.

“Look,” Will says, suddenly urgent, pointing over the gunwale and beyond the prow. “Do you see?”

James peers where he is pointing. “I see only mist.”

“And no land,” Will adds, nodding. “The wind has us. Dusk will find us at world’s end.”

He still sounds so certain. James looks at him, his face turned toward the empty and hidden horizon, and finds as always traces of that apprehension that it took him so long to see. “I trust you,” he says, and that at least is no lie. “And—” He considers how best to put it. “I hope for your sake that we will find her.”

A sudden frown deepens the faint lines on Will’s face, etched there by the salt wind and sun. He half-turns toward James, his fingers tapping against the wood of the rail. “For my sake?” he repeats. “You are… very kind.”

The tone of bewilderment in his voice breaks James’s heart. He swallows, and the sound is loud to his ears: the _Dutchman_ is moving swiftly into thicker mist, and even the lapping of the waves is deadened. “You have every right to expect otherwise,” James says softly. He cannot look at Will, so he looks at his own hands on the gunwale. “I do not blame you for hating me. But you should know that I—” He falters, unsure of how to continue. “That I—” _I am sorry,_ he wants to say, but the words are too small. He is sorry for everything he has done, and for the first betrayal so long ago.

“You think…” Will interrupts, sounding nearly as hesitant as James feels. He shakes his head. “No, James.”

In spite of himself, James meets Will’s gaze, confused.

Will purses his lips. “I was… for a long time, I have been—very angry with you. Certainly when—”

James does not want to hear him say it. “When I left you.”

“No,” Will replies. “I meant when you betrayed us all. When you took Jones’s heart back to Beckett.” It stuns James once more, just as it did in Will’s cabin: yet he cannot argue or make excuses. In any case, Will does not leave him time to do so. “Certainly I was angry then,” he continues. “At times I have blamed you for this”—he gestures vaguely at the ship—“this curse, this life. Call it what you like, there were moments when I felt you had done me greater harm than anyone else in the world.” He pauses then, seemingly lost in thought. It would, James knows, be the opportune moment to speak the apologies that lie leaden on his tongue, but he cannot think how to begin. And, strangely enough, Will does not sound angry—merely deliberate, thoughtful. And as James flounders in his regret, Will speaks again. “But I have never hated you, James. I do not think I know how.”

James searches Will’s face, wanting to believe him as he has never wanted anything before—and he finds to his half-bewildered relief that he does believe him. Perhaps some part of it is his own desire, mixed with the guilt and shame that he carries always, but he hopes he would recognize a lie if there were one in Will’s eyes. Yet he sees none there. It is more than passing strange—that James has grown so accustomed to the cold distance between them, which has lessened of late but not vanished—grown used to it like the ground beneath his feet, and he does not know what now lies beneath it. Where ought he to step? What ought he to say?

“I should think,” James says at last, dredging up his voice once more, “that you would have learned how to hate me by now. It does not seem the sort of thing that grows harder with time.” He catches the faintly disbelieving look that Will throws him, and adds, “But I am glad it is not so.”

Will shakes his head, a smile touching his lips. “If ever I might have hated you, I could hardly do so now. We have simply known each other too long. Not always happily,” he concedes with a tilt of his head, “not always on the same side, but—for my part—” He pauses, seeming to consider. “There is no one else living who knows me so well,” he finishes at last. He is looking again toward the sea.

With Will’s gaze turned elsewhere, James watches him. The lines of his face, made harder by the years but no less familiar. The eerie play of the mist on his eyes and in his dark hair. The worn and unknowable sadness. “I am not living,” James reminds him.

Will looks back to him. “No,” he says, “not anymore.”

He is no longer smiling, but his eyes have gentled. Or perhaps the gentleness has been there for some time, and only now can James see it. He does not know. That Will might not think with anger on him, that he might even hold some lingering fondness for him, nearly surpasses belief. And yet it is a comfort, here at the edge of the world, on the cusp of what James is sure can only be tragedy: in spite of all the rest, he is glad to know it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr](http://blanketed-in-stars.tumblr.com) if you want! Thanks for reading <3


	9. Graveyard Watch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Graveyard watch: the middle watch on a ship (midnight to 4 a.m.).

James has grown used to the mist over the weeks of wandering. He no longer finds it strange when the pearly dawn comes slow, without the bright colors he remembers from life; when the wind blows cool tendrils over the deck that leave droplets along the rigging, higher than the waves can reach; when night falls without a star. The sounds of the sea are curiously deadened, so that the _Dutchman_ seems almost to be floating in the clouds. With two or three sunny exceptions, the days have been the same since James came aboard, unceasing, unchanging.

He senses, now, rather than sees or hears, a change in the mist. As the day fades, the world turns from white to silver, shot through with the last rays of the setting sun they cannot see—but unlike all the other days, the darkness does not fall completely. There remains a faint glow in the air, coming from nowhere and illuminating everything.

“Is this usual?” James asks, looking to where Will still stands beside him.

Will gives a vague half-shake of his head. “I have never gone so far in the _Dutchman,”_ he says. His voice seems unusually loud in the stillness. “Only aboard the _Pearl,_ but that was a different journey altogether. I think”—he gazes in the direction they are drifting, though there is nothing to see—“I think little, if anything, is usual here.”

James snorts. “But where is _here?_ Have we reached world’s end yet?”

“No, I think not.”

James does not have to wonder at the confidence in Will’s voice. He expects they will know it when they have passed over, whenever that is. He notices Will shiver: the wind that carries the ship also pushes them through denser patches of mist, which settle like rain on Will’s arms and in his hair. “We can go below,” James offers.

He does not expect Will to agree, and is not surprised when he shakes his head. “I want to see it.”

In truth, James cannot blame him. They have spent so long sailing circles around this moment—strange now that all they can do is wait. He wonders, for the hundredth time, what they will find when they pass beyond the edge of the world. The locker will be there, in whatever form it takes now; but what else? James very much doubts it will be what Will seems to wish, Elizabeth standing on the beach of some far island waiting for them. But the alternative—that she is not there—is unbearable for a host of other reasons.

So they sail on, passing through the interminable twilight, not speaking. It is a simple silence, because it seems to James there is little more they can say until they reach their destination. That is not to say, however, that he does not wish to speak. He has not forgotten their conversation of a few hours previous—how could he? It sits in James’s chest like a warm, bright thing, precious against the dull mist. It takes his breath away, would make his pulse stumble if he had one.

And then—so slowly that James does not notice at first—the air about them changes once more. The mist takes on a darker tone, as if every silvery drop has been tarnished. The haze draws in, clouding even the deck so that James must squint to make out the masts. Instinctually, he reaches for Will—and remembers himself, and draws his hand back.

“I’m here,” Will says softly, still at his side.

James cannot tell whether Will saw him reach out or if he is simply trying to reassure them both. “This may mean nothing,” he says. “We’ve encountered mists this thick before.”

“We have,” Will allows. He sounds unconvinced: his voice is tight with anticipation.

Silence falls again, more burdened than before. James clenches his hands on the gunwale and stares out at the mist. It presses back, close and stifling, and he has the urge to shout out if only to hear a sound that is not the faint rocking of the sea. The darkness falls further.

“James.”

There is a strange, shaken note in Will’s voice, and when James looks around, he finds Will has moved closer. But he is looking away—up—pointing out from the ship, over the hidden water. James follows his gaze and sees—nothing. Only a smudge in the dull charcoal gray of the sky.

“Do you see that?” Will breathes.

“No,” James replies, but before the word has fully left his mouth, he does see. Faint among the mist where Will is pointing, a star is shining. And another, James notices, in the southern sky, the haze shifting to show its light. Another, in the west. He stares, wondering, as the mists drift, though the wind has ceased—like spent clouds dwindling to nothing, melting away to reveal the heavens.

The sky is lit now by more stars, James imagines, than he has ever seen before. Perhaps it is only the shock after so much time spent inside the unnatural mist. But he feels weak, staring upward. The sky is clear: the stars fairly sing with light, cold and fair. They look near enough to touch. And the water—the water—black as the space between them, but full of bright reflections, so that the horizon is lost in the endless mirrored surface.

Beside him, Will takes a ragged breath. “We’ve arrived,” he says. He looks over to James, and the expression on his face is somewhere between trepidation and—and sadness, James thinks, surprised to see it.

“I should think you’d be overjoyed,” James says. “We are one step closer to finding Elizabeth, are we not?”

“I am glad,” Will says, “truly.” He smiles, and it looks honest enough. But sudden misgivings are springing up in James’s mind, beyond any doubts he has had so far. “I simply have to wonder what we will find,” Will explains. “At the locker.”

At the echo of his own thoughts, James’s concern deepens. He cannot truly say that he doubts Will’s plans, now that they have come this far against all odds, but neither can he forget those glimpses he has had of something lurking beneath Will’s iron determination. He senses that Will doubts himself—but he has continued in spite of that, and James cannot tell where it will lead. He fears this stubbornness, this persistence to the point of rashness—and yet it is familiar to him, both from his memories of Will and his knowledge of himself. They are too alike, the two of them: or they were, once.

But he does not know how to tell Will any of this, not when his mood is so fragile already, the sorrow still lingering in his eyes. “Are we far from the locker now?” he asks.

“I am not sure,” Will confesses. “There are stars now, but”—he gestures to indicate the heavens—“none that I have the skill to sail by.”

James frowns and looks upward again. He searches for the north star, but comes up short—among the hundreds of tiny lights that dot the sky, none of them are the familiar shape of Ursa Minor. Neither can he find the Pleiades, Orion, or any of the other stars whose names he knows. The realization is disturbing, more than anything else James has experienced on this voyage; he learned to sail by those stars as a boy, to orient himself on the coastless sea. Their absence is a loss. Looking up at the new constellations, he understands at last, in the pit of his stomach: they are beyond the world. This is a sky he has never seen before.

Will is looking at him now, something soft in his eyes, as if he guesses at James’s bewilderment. “It is unsettling, I know,” he says. “To be so far from everything.”

James turns to him with a staggering sense of relief. “Unsettling,” he repeats, “yes.” Truly, he thinks, that is the best word for it—as if everything has turned upside down, ripped out at the roots. “You’re bearing it rather well.”

“As are you,” Will points out, “all things considered.” The corner of his mouth twitches. “I suppose I have become somewhat accustomed to it,” he continues. “The isolation, the distance. I found a certain peace in it after a time.”

“Did you?” It is hard for James to imagine, a Will who is not bitter in his solitude, who does not resent his lot. He supposes that person died with Elizabeth, twenty years ago. “It is beautiful,” he says, gazing out at the glassy water. “That I cannot deny.”

“And there is a current,” Will says, “do you see?” He points down along the side of the ship, where it is clear that the _Dutchman_ is gliding through the waves at some speed, though there is no wind: her sails hang empty.

James stares. “Just as you said.” He looks up at Will again, unsure how to say what is going through his mind. The mixture of amazement and discomfiture does not lend itself well to words. And he feels again that strangeness that was his constant companion when he first came aboard, the sense that he does not entirely recognize the person in front of him. “I should have believed you,” James says, “but I did not think—”

“Don’t tell me that you do not believe in magic,” Will says, shaking his head. “After all we have seen? I mean to say—look at yourself.”

“I could hardly be a skeptic now, no,” James agrees dryly. “You are putting words in my mouth.”

“What did you mean, then?”

James hesitates, meeting Will’s curious gaze. “Well—simply that I could not—fathom it, I suppose,” he says. “All of these incredible things, and—and you.”

Will bursts out laughing. The sound echoes across the water, miraculously light. “And me?” he repeats. “Are you trying to tell me that I am uninteresting?”

James imagines he would be flushing by now, had he a solid form. Nevertheless, he drinks in the sound of Will’s laughter eagerly, smiling with him. “You have done only one thing for the past eighty years,” he points out. “That does not make for the most engaging of characters.”

“And you have been dead for just as long,” Will returns. “If I am so dull, what does that make you?”

It is the bright, sharp look in Will’s eyes—anything but cruel—that makes James laugh as well, more than the joke itself. He hears his own laughter as if it belongs to a stranger, and it hurts, somehow, a faint ghostly ache in his lungs. He does not know the last time he laughed like this, in death or in life. And he has missed, desperately, the sight of Will laughing so freely: the way his eyes crinkle at the corners, his head tilting back, something sweet and open in his face. His chest pulls tight: with grief, with longing.

“Truly, though,” Will says, chuckling, “do you find it so hard to comprehend these things?”

James shakes his head. “As I said—only in relation to you.” Will frowns at him, still with that playful light in his eyes. “All I know of you is from before I understood any of this,” James explains, “or very little of it, at the least. And when I look at you I do not see the captain of the _Dutchman,_ or even a pirate.” He has never been able to see it, not even when they were enemies, no matter how desperately he tried.

The smile has left Will’s face entirely, leaving only a lingering softness to show that it was ever there. “Who do you see, then?” he asks.

He asks so simply. As if the question involves nothing more than curiosity, when he must know or at least guess at the answer; surely, James thinks, this, he must expect. “I see you,” he says, feeling the heavy weight of the words, “as I first knew you. In Port Royal, before any of this.” He can see it in his mind’s eye even now, looking at Will: his face lit by the moon, by candlelight, by the dawn, the way his eyes would shine.

For a long moment, Will says nothing, and James himself feels pressed into silence, unable to say anything more even if he could find the words. There is something indecipherable in Will’s expression as he looks at James. He gives a quiet, almost surprised huff of laughter and glances down for a moment. When he looks back up, his eyes are shadowed. “I can well understand that,” he says. “But I am not him anymore, James.”

“I think you are,” James argues. He feels that it is true, despite the sense of strangeness he has now and then—and he is not deluding himself; he knows that Will has lived a life he cannot know, that he has changed. Yet he cannot rid himself of the conviction—that he recognizes Will. Perhaps not on the surface, perhaps not at every moment, but in a deep and abiding way that he cannot shake. “You said it yourself. I know you.”

Will sighs. He picks at the wood of the gunwale with his fingers. The way he is leaning out ever so slightly over the water, the reflection of the starlight glows pale on his face. “You know me,” he agrees, as if it is a defeat. “And I know you.”

His voice is shockingly raw and bare, close almost to tears, James thinks. He cannot tell what is so upsetting—if it is the mere fact that they are familiar to one another, or if there is something else. He hopes it is the latter. “It could hardly be otherwise,” he points out, hoping to soothe him, if only with the truth. “We have known each other almost from childhood. In a way—” He stops, doubtful, but Will is watching him closely, hanging on his words. “In a way, you made me who I am.”

“I don’t understand,” Will tells him, frowning.

“I cannot credit all my life to you,” James says quickly. “Nor would I want to. But it seems to me—” He stops again. What he wants to say feels too vital to be spoken. But there it is: “I learned so much from you, far more than I realized at the time. More than my ambition ever gave me.” He swallows. “At times I think that all the best parts of me have come from you.”

“You have been brave without me,” Will says. “You have been good.” There is a sudden spark in his eyes, an intensity that surprises James. “Surely you must see that.”

“I have done some good deeds,” James allows, “but far too few, and too late.” He knows they have had this conversation before, and he cannot fathom why Will will not let it be, when the truth is so plain. He thinks of Elizabeth on the stern balcony of the _Dutchman,_ the fear and strength mingled in her gaze: despite all he had done, she had asked him to come with her. But he could not do so—could never have—just as he cannot face the fire of Will’s gaze now, and looks down at his hands glowing blue on the rail. “I am sorry,” he says. It is what he had meant to say before, and still he finds the words paltry, but he knows they must be spoken. “I ought to have told you long ago,” he says, “but perhaps I can tell you now how sorry I am.”

A soft sigh comes again from Will, sounding less like a defeat this time. “I have said I bear you no ill will, James—”

“Nevertheless, I apologize.” James looks up without meaning to, and is unprepared for the way Will is gazing at him: with kindness, with his own sorrow. He feels himself cut as if down to the bone. “For all of it, Will. For betraying you and Elizabeth, for all the harm I caused.” He knows he will never be able to say enough, do enough, to express the true depth of what he feels—the guilt, hot and sickly, the regret that burns like salt with each breath.

The stars swirl by above and below them, the night passing in the slow endless glide of the ship. There is silence between them for so long that James senses the dawn approaching, though there is no moon, only an infinitesimal shift in the air. In the darkness, it is impossible to tell if they are near land—whatever passes for land at world’s end—and so James finds himself watching the water where the hull meets the sea, the mesmerizing ripple and spill of the starlit current against the wet black wood.

And then Will speaks again, as if there has been no pause, in a low voice. “All of that is gone,” he says. James looks over to see Will looking back, still with that softness in his eyes.

“You have not forgotten it,” James says, matching his tone. “You cannot have forgiven it.”

“Even so,” Will insists, “it is in the past. You cannot change what you have done—and I find myself weary of anger.” A faint smile touches his lips. “Even in the past, when I felt so bitterly toward you, I knew it could hardly have ended differently. And you had no way of knowing what would come of it all.”

James shakes his head. “That does not excuse—”

“Does it not?” Will interrupts, leaning toward James in his earnestness. “We were so young, James. We each took the path that seemed bearable at the time, and we have lived with the consequences.” Again, he half-smiles. “Or died with them, as it were.”

“I cannot accept that,” James says, choked almost to a whisper.

“You had your life,” Will says, “and I had mine. No one on earth has ever had more than that.”

His voice takes on a strangely bitter note at the end, and James realizes—Will does, in fact, have more than his one life. He ought by rights to have died long ago, when his heart was first cut from his chest; but he is still here, still hale and bound by duty. And, from everything James has observed in the past months, sickened by it. Now James stands looking at him, the calamity of the situation settling differently than it ever has before, and he wonders how much of it Will regrets. Where and how he would cast his lot, had he a second chance.

Will must see some change in his face, for he glances away. The set of his mouth changes—he swallows, and looks down at the rail. Closes his eyes.

James wants to reach for him, to comfort him. He keeps his hands where they are, resting on the wood, knowing that any movement would only betray him. “I am sorry,” he says again.

“I do not blame you,” Will says, opening his eyes but keeping his gaze lowered. “Not anymore.”

“Be that as it may,” James begins, and falters. The air is warm and clear between them. James breathes it slowly, considering how he might reply. The truth is that he had meant, this last time, to apologize not for his own misdeeds but for Will’s plight, for the endless march of days and years that must weigh so heavily upon him. The truth is that James can hardly breathe for the wish to lessen that burden, if only he could. The truth is— “I wish I had not left you,” James says. His ribs ache with the grief, sharper even than the sword that killed him.

Will looks over to James, something sweet and simple etched into his face. It is familiar, and painful, and beautiful—the face of his memories, once again before him. Will is smiling. He lifts his hand and places it on the rail, at the same place where James’s hand rests, though they cannot touch. And that gentleness in his eyes is love, James realizes. He recognizes it like something out of a long-ago dream. “As do I,” Will tells him.

—

When dawn comes, it is colorless as if they were still trapped in the mist—but it breaks like a spark on a white-hot anvil, sudden and bright, the sun’s rays ascending from below the water and striking the sea with blinding clarity. Before long, the waves are tipped with silver below the pale blue sky. The water rolls swiftly, carrying the _Dutchman_ ever onward toward the horizon—and there is a horizon. James feasts on the sight of it, standing at the prow and scanning on instinct. The mist is cool on his face.

He hears the door of the captain’s cabin open and close, and then Will’s steps upon the deck behind him, but doesn’t turn. Will does not speak, either, as he approaches to stand beside James at the prow. The silence between them feels thick, but not so tense as it has been these past months—easier, in fact, than it has been in over eighty years. But they have resolved nothing, and James does not mistake the relief he feels for absolution. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees that Will is standing slightly turned, as if he cannot decide whether to face James or not.

“It does not seem possible, does it?” Will asks. James glances over, and he inclines his head beyond the prow, toward the open ocean. “That there is a horizon here. I would have thought the sea would be endless, if we have gone beyond the end of the world.”

James squints toward the line in the distance where the water meets the sky. It is strange, now that Will points it out—but no stranger than anything else they have seen. Certainly no stranger than James himself. “We have just spent months without the horizon,” he says. “I am glad to see it.”

Will chuckles. “That does not surprise me, coming from you. You know—” He pauses, thoughtful. “I understand now what you meant when you spoke of your love of the sea.” James looks at him directly, surprised, and Will gives a half-shake of his head. “That is—I understood from the start. I told you as much.” Will’s voice gains a sudden hint of unease beneath his casual words. “But I used to feel—envious. Of the freedom you enjoyed, and the life you had at sea.”

“And you no longer do?” James asks, hesitant. He marvels that Will thought him free, when James himself felt pinioned on all sides.

“I have that life now,” Will replies, matter-of-fact. “And over time I have grown to treasure it as I imagine you must have.”

James is not sure what Will is trying to tell him—and he gets the unsettling sense that Will is driving toward nothing at all, that he is talking simply for the sake of it. He is not entirely certain how to respond to that either. “I should think you would tire of it after so long,” he says. “And—well—surely you know that I was happiest with you.”

Despite their conversation from the night before, James fears for a moment that he has overstepped. Will makes a quick motion with his head, as if flinching from something. When he speaks, his voice is quiet. “I had no chance to grow tired,” he says. “For most of that time, I knew my duty—and Elizabeth was there with me,” he adds. He is still not looking at James, but his mouth twists into something that is almost a smile. “There was nothing to miss, when she was there.”

The usual ache begins in James’s chest, not quite jealousy, but not unlike it either. “I suppose not,” he agrees softly.

“I do not say these things to hurt you,” Will says, sounding strained. “And I apologize. It cannot be easy to hear. But—it has been twenty years, James, and I cannot bear _not_ to speak of her.” He turns toward James at last, and there is a pleading look in his eyes. “And I know you can understand it. What she and I shared.”

James opens his mouth to deny it, to say what Will knows full well: that James was never truly close to her, that she felt no real love for him, that he would never think to compare his distant and futile courtship—honest though it was—to the life she had with Will. But the words die on his lips. It dawns on him that Will believes James will understand not because of whatever he might have felt for Elizabeth, but because of what he and Will felt for one another. What they both still feel, though Will would never say it outright and James cannot say he blames him. Nevertheless, the knowledge breaks like a second sunrise inside him: he is not nothing to Will. There is nothing he can expect or wish for beyond that.

So it is simple enough to smile at Will. “Tell me about it,” he says.

Will smiles back, tentative, trembling. “Are you sure?”

James swallows his pain though it cuts his throat like a knife. He would give everything, he thinks, suffer anything, for Will to keep looking at him like this, full of relief and hope. “I want to know,” James tells him; it is, wretchedly, the truth. “Let us—let us speak as we once did.”

Will’s smile slips slightly, but all he says is, “I am out of practice.”

“Then tell me,” James begins, but he cannot think of anything in particular he wishes to know. He gazes out to the horizon again, though he can feel Will watching him. “Tell me, what did the two of you speak of?”

“Many things,” Will says at once, a hint of bemusement in his voice. “Everything.”

“Surely not everything,” James argues, irritated by Will’s playful non-answer and already frustrated with himself for asking.

“Truly,” Will insists, “everything.” He pauses. “We spoke of you.”

The shock is such that James struggles to keep his eyes on the horizon, that faint line in the mirrored blue. “Of me,” he repeats.

“She told me of your death,” Will says, “some weeks after the fact.”

Will’s voice is so low that it is almost cold, yet James senses that it is not meant cruelly. With his gaze, he traces the path of the waves toward where they meet the sky. The unceasing motion brings a welcome numbness.

When James says nothing, Will goes on. “And I told her of our time together.”

Now James is startled out of his deliberate distance, and glances to Will before forcing his gaze back to the sea. “Why?” he asks.

“She asked,” Will says simply. “I did not want to lie to her.”

It is so like Will that James cannot even find it in himself to feel betrayed; of course Will would be honest, unfailingly so. And James was dead, so the secret had belonged to no one but Will. “What,” James says, and hesitates, afraid to continue. “What did you—?” He cannot finish the question.

“I told her that we had been in love,” Will says, softer than the breeze. “That we were close for many years, just as close as she and I were.”

The acknowledgment, so unexpectedly forthright, sits sharp-edged and heavy in James’s chest. There is a smudge on the horizon, a trick of the light, and he stares at it. “What did she say to that?” he asks.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Will shift his weight where he stands. “She listened,” he says. “And then she said that it made no difference to her. She was glad, she said, if we had been happy together.”

James wills his eyes to dry, the jagged lump in his throat to melt away, as he keeps his eyes fixed on that dark smear in the distance. He breathes out slowly. He is not sure what he expected this knowledge to mean to him—only that he is weak with relief for the second time, and reaches out to grasp the rail where it slopes up toward the bowsprit; he feels he will fall otherwise. Strange, that he could fear this so much even now and not have known it.

“You know she would not have been cruel,” Will says, gently, as if he can read James’s thoughts. And James supposes he can, more or less. For many years, they must have been afraid of the same things. “She did not hate you for it,” Will tells him.

“I know,” James says, choked; he cannot bear this kindness, which stings for all its warmth. He blinks to clear his eyes and takes in lungfuls of the morning air. Steadies himself against the rail, rocking with the ship as she rises and falls.

And then he pauses, the breath stolen from him again, and squints toward the horizon. The dark shape has grown larger, and he can see now that it is pale in color, glimmering in the sun. It does not waver from its point amid the waves. “Look,” he says, and points.

Will sucks in a quick breath. When James looks at him, his hands are in fists, his knuckles white. He glances over and meets James’s gaze, and his eyes are shocked and wide. “The locker,” he says, his voice even. At once, the vulnerability vanishes, an open window snapped shut: Will is made of steel once more, unyielding but for the barest trace of surprise that he cannot hide.

The current carries them swiftly toward the island, and the shimmer turns out at closer quarters to be sand, stretching up from the water’s edge and forming dunes that hide the rest of the island from view. It does not seem particularly large—but it is difficult to say. Will does not offer his opinion, but paces silently about the deck as they approach. James watches him at it, unsettled. For all his promises to himself that he would not forget himself—what he has done, the errand on which they have come—he feels suddenly cold, bereft without the intimacy of the past day.

They drop anchor at a distance, and a weight settles in James’s stomach as the _Dutchman_ stops, rolling gently in the waves. Then Will goes to the last remaining longboat and stops with his hand on the rope, looking at James. “Will you help me lower it?”

With something of a start, James acquiesces. The pulleys squeaks under the strain as they haul on the ropes in smooth, measured movements. “Am I to go ashore alone?” James asks as they work.

“I’ll come with you,” Will says.

James frowns. “You cannot,” he argues. “Not for another four years.”

Will keeps his eyes trained on the boat, following its slow descent. “I cannot go ashore, no,” he says, “but we have gone beyond all the shores of the world. The locker is not a part of the curse.”

He says this with his usual certainty, so calmly that there is no room for contradiction—and yet James cannot let it lie. “Have you ever tried before?” he asks. “To step on land before the ten years were through?”

“Naturally, I tried it,” Will replies. He does not seem to take offense at the question, despite his recent return to coolness. “It was not long after I became captain—less than one year. I was curious.” He shakes his head, leaning into the next pull of the rope. “My foot began to burn the moment I stepped onto the beach. I felt it, but I did not turn back—I wanted to see how far I could go.”

“And?” James prompts, fascinated and horrified at once.

Will quirks one eyebrow at him. “By the time I made it back to the boat, both my feet were black and smoking. I could not walk for a week.”

James lets out a surprised huff of breath. “Only a week?” Before Will can respond, another thought comes to him. “But you have no limp.”

“There is hardly any scar to speak of, either,” Will adds. There is a touch of wry amusement in his eyes at whatever expression is on James’s face. “I do not think it would have killed me,” he tells James, more seriously. “You forget. I am tethered to life.”

“I did not forget,” James replies, abruptly far more concerned than he had been a moment before. “But if you had not turned back, what would have happened to you?”

The boat is in the water, and Will lets go of his rope, spreading his hands in a shrug. “I would have continued to burn, I expect.”

He walks away, into his cabin, and James is left staring after him. The image comes to him of a house he once saw in England, ravaged by fire in the night—it still stood in the morning, each beam clearly visible, but blackened and chalky to the touch, a hulking shape that fell at once to ashes in the wind. Is that what awaits Will, eventually, if he stays on land before his time is up—some eternal ruined shell, unable to die?

It is horrible to think on, and almost too awful to believe. James wishes he could attribute Will’s calm, casual tone to a deliberate avoidance of reality. But then Will emerges from his cabin again, and James knows it isn’t true. For Will is carrying the chest, the dark metal glinting in the sun. At the sight of his face, grave and carefully blank, a black dread seeps into James’s mind, his blood, his very bones.

For several moments, as they descend the ladder into the longboat—Will with the chest slung over his shoulder—he does not trust himself to speak. Will pushes away from the _Dutchman’s_ side and takes up the oars, steering them deftly toward the island. “What is your intention with this?” James asks, indicating the chest with a glance.

Will, too, glances at it, and then at James, his gaze inscrutable. “You know what I intend,” he says.

“You think there is someone in the locker with whom you can make a deal?” James asks, disbelieving. “Calypso?”

“Perhaps.” Will twists around to look at the island over his shoulder, leaning back into the next stroke of the oars. “I would like to be prepared,” he says, “whatever we find.”

“But what do you think we will find?” James presses.

He does not know what makes him say it. He knows it is pointless; worse, it is cruel. Perhaps some part of him simply wants to hear Will admit outright that they are unlikely to find Elizabeth, or anyone else, here. James is not sure, and he regrets the question at once—but Will does not respond at all.

Their boat is carried directly to shore by the strength of the current, and the tide deposits them in shallow water, the hull scraping sand with a familiar low rasp. James gets out before Will can even relax his grip on the oars and picks up the chest from where it sits between the thwarts. He dislikes the feel of the iron handles, and even less does he appreciate the strange weight of it in his arms and shoulders. But he does not want Will to carry it at all.

Will looks up at James’s sudden movement, surprise breaking through the stony mask on his face. A heartbeat later his expression switches to one of knowing amusement. “Are you going to hit me over the head with that?” he asks.

“If I thought it would stop you from getting out of the boat,” James says, “then perhaps.”

Will stands up in the boat with a sailor’s ease. “I trust you know better.” His tone is teasing, nearly light, and so incongruous with the situation that James does not know whether to laugh or rebuke him. He says nothing, however, stopped by the look in Will’s eyes—there is something there that James cannot quite place. He would almost call it fear.

And then Will steps from the boat, as if it is nothing. There is no smoke, no smell of burning flesh. He stands in the sand a moment, then takes a step forward. Another. He looks up at James with half of a triumphant smile on his lips.

“You were right,” James concedes, but he does not relinquish the chest.

Will’s smile fades as he looks around. The beach is as empty as it appeared from the ship, and entirely featureless, the white dunes stark against the sky.

“Elizabeth!” Will calls, so suddenly that it makes James start. He begins to stride along the shore, just above the mats of seaweed and shells left by the water. James follows, but Will does not look back to see. “Elizabeth, are you here?”

There is no reply; here, there are no caves for the calls to echo back again. The only sound is the rushing waves and their own soft steps in the sand. “Will,” James begins, as gently as he can.

As if at some unseen signal, Will turns from the water and marches up the beach. It is slow going, for the sand is thick and deep and slides with every step. “Elizabeth!” he calls as he goes, a new note in his voice, one that chills James to his core.

He does not try to interrupt again—he knows that Will would not hear him—and concentrates on keeping pace, on not losing his grip on the chest, which drags like ballast in his arms. He follows Will, his foreboding growing stronger. It is so quiet—there is no wind, no gulls. The sand shifts under his feet and James nearly falls, but catches himself in time to see Will forging ahead, now scrambling up one of the dunes. By the time James reaches the top, Will has started down the far slope, half-falling in the sand. “Elizabeth!” he cries, his voice so loud it cracks.

James cannot fathom where he is going. He doubts whether Will knows himself—it seems likely that he is simply moving because the alternative is unthinkable, having come so far. If he could, James would take his hand and pull him to a halt, keep him there, no matter how angry Will became. But all he can do is clutch the chest, hauling it along like a great metal albatross. Will is ahead, and James follows. He joins him at the foot of the dune.

For a moment, Will pauses. His breath comes in uneven bursts from the climb and the shouting. He spares a half-second’s glance for James before he is off again.

This time, James does not fall so far behind. He hears Will’s gasps, feels the faint spray of sand from his steps. Nearly speaks when Will stumbles— _be careful_ —but catches himself in time.

Halfway up the dune, which has a gentler incline than the last, Will stops. James halts beside him and waits. He has the uneasy sensation of standing on a precipice into which he cannot see, beyond which might be anything—or nothing at all.

After a long moment, Will speaks. “She is not here,” he says. His voice is low and full of darkness, thunder in the distance. He looks to James, the same darkness shadowing his whole face. “I was so certain,” he says, sounding almost strangled, “so sure that we would find her—James—”

It is worse than all the failures that have come before, hearing Will say his name like this, seeing his utter despair. Not for the first time, James regrets ever having expressed his doubts; he wants to soften this in any way he can. “Perhaps she is farther inland,” he suggests, though he knows it to be folly. He continues striding up the dune.

“There is no point,” Will says, but he walks after him as if he could catch him by the arm and hold him back. “Come—”

James turns around, taking the last steps to the top backwards, looking down at Will. “We cannot simply turn back,” he says. “There is nothing we can do there.” He gestures vaguely in the direction he thinks they have come, though the world of the living could lie anywhere on the empty horizon. Will draws level with him. “If she is not here,” James says, imploring, looking into his face, “then where else would she be?”

Will does not reply at once. He avoids James’s gaze, looking instead over James’s shoulder into the valley beyond the dune. His lips part ever so slightly, and his eyes widen. “James,” he says, the shred of a whisper, “turn around.”

James’s stomach clenches, his dread returning in full force. He turns carefully in the shifting sand and cannot at first comprehend what he sees. Beyond the dune on which they are standing, the island widens to a low valley—but it is not filled with sand, nor does the desert give way to the coarse scrubland James might have expected. Instead there is a deep, thick sea of black water. No, not water. Black mist, roiling against itself, and rising as if drawn like a tide.

“We must go,” Will says.

James does not argue this time. He turns and starts down again, only to hear Will give a muffled sort of gasp from behind him. He looks back and sees Will stumble on the sand, which trickles and slides beneath his feet—and then he pitches backward, arms thrown out to break a fall that never seems to end, and drops into the mist-filled valley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr](http://blanketed-in-stars.tumblr.com) if you want! Thanks for reading :)


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